They weren’t already?

Maybe if more of “the economy” went into the pockets of consumers they’d have money to buy phones as often as they used to.

I am a big fan of cats. However, if they live outside, they are feral. And they should not be allowed to keep living outside.

My preferred solution would be for people to take them in and feed them, but you definitely should not be feeding them while they are still living outside. Outdoor cats cause a lot of destruction to the ecosystem by overhunting small animals such as songbirds, even to the point of extinction.

Okay, but hear me out.

Take the amount of money that would be spent on a bailout. If you go ahead with the bailout, then the majority of that money goes to the wealthy because they are the ones who can afford most of those shares. Some working-class people get aided, but most of the money goes to maintain or even increase the power of the wealthy.

Now, take that same amount of money, and put it towards ACA subsidies, or any other social program that aids the working class. Now the vast majority of that money goes to those who really need it, and it lessens the pain which the working class would be burdened with following the crash.

You can put some of that money directly into useful research grants that aren’t AI related as well.

Whatever your concern is, you can spend the money directly addressing that concern with much more efficiency than a corporate bailout that benefits mostly the wealthy.

You can help the people by funding social programs like social security, healthcare (medicare, medicaid, and ACA subsidies or better yet a full single-payer healthcare program), food assistance, housing assistance, education, childcare, direct monetary assistance for the working class (such as tax breaks or UBI), etc.

You can put the people before the companies by not bailing out the shareholders of stupid investments like AI, by cracking down on labor violations and monopolies, and by seriously increasing taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals in order to fund the social safety net. Reducing spending on the military industrial complex would probably help too.

Neither 401ks or corporate pensions are a good solution. They place a burden that should be caught by a social safety net on each individual, and further pressure each individual to engage in capitalism in order to secure their retirement, giving more power to the employers. Retirement should not be tied to employment, same as healthcare.

I think the point is that the people should be “bailed out” before the shareholders should be. There should be a safety net in place robust enough that stupid risks like this can be allowed to fail without essentials and ordinary people being caught in the fallout.