My brother and his wife did fraudulent unemployment claims. They used the money they scammed to buy a new house. My friends husband lost his job when his boss took money from the government then closed his business and also bought a new house. They definitely needed better restrictions to prevent scams.
Government needs to be voluntarily funded so that if people don't want to give a scam institution money, they don't have to. The government should not be handing out money or taking money by force.
Any number of podcasters invented large imaginary staff teams and claims tens of thousands up to hundreds of thousands of loans ended up forgiven. All fraud, not based in any existing, established real staffing or expenses. Just imagine what you wish were real then make huge claims based on that invented reality. Disgusting.
I live in Miami which is pretty much the epicenter of scams in the US. During COVID they sold out of boats, luxury items, and supercars. Apparently crime does pay and pay very very well.
@@alexlopez5800 I've heard of people that "swept things under the rug"... And that "people have had the rug pulled from under their feet" But NEVER that "someone swept the rug from under You"... But apparently it's funny so I guess it might be worth waiting for ;) Best regards.
As an Australian, I am glad you briefly mentioned the Australian bushfires being used as a opportunity to scam. Both in Australia and internationally, there were lots of organisations and “gofundme’s” etc seeking money. I was disgusted, and was pretty sure they were mostly scams, although it seemed rude to say so at the time. I could say a lot more on this topic.
We had fire close by here in Australia where I live that started out in national parks and destroyed 100’s of houses and only a couple of life luckily as come through with intense speed in the middle of the night. I had heard a few went out to the national park and where the fire started was almost a straight line from where the burning had come from, nothing in nature is a straight line
Pandemic of a respiratory virus and pandemic of scammers taking advantage of it all. It's both reassuring and super depressing to realize that a-holes exist in every nation and city on Earth.
The most frustrating part about this is the people/businesses/entrepreneurs/subcontractors who legitimately needed assistance and didn’t apply bc they were worried about doing something incorrect/get in trouble bc there was such a lack of clarity 🙋♂️
There are so many resources online to help you for free. That is partially on them. I was dying, and I too missed out on aid. Anyway people always talk about the bad effects of the stimulus. They never talk about what it would have been like without them. People also confuse the effects of global instability with all the insane conflicts with Russia, Houthis, and even Israel has an effect. All causing prices to go up, to the stimulus. (Especially Bidens).
I still get scam calls and emails telling me I can get up to $26,000 per employee for my business as compensation for the inconvenience during the pandemic. They say they will handle all of the paperwork and the check will be made to me.
you should do it.. everyone else did. im going to research how I can get my cut. im sure Amazon, google, Microsoft, Pfizer and the rest of the trillion dollar companies did.. if everyone except you is doing it then you put yourself in a disadvantage and thats not fair.
@@ohioplayer-bl9em You had to actually show a major impairment in the business during covid vs the previous year. That's why there is still so much money left, so few businesses were negatively impacted by covid due to the trillions in handouts.
When you make fraud less risky and pay more than honest work, this is the natural conclusion. We have created a world where the accumulation of capital is placed above morality, it's not surprising.
And people like Pat here will talk about this fraud unironically while never mentioning that our entire monetary system fundamentally runs on fraud as a policy. What a joke. Bet you this guy commits worse levels of fraud on a daily basis at his day job
I was locked up for 52 days in county jail for WEED this year from February to April. While locked up, the county jail was telling people who haven't filed for benefits or were unaware they qualified for them to file including providing instruction to them about it'll come to them in jail. What these inmates don't know is if the $1200 came to the jail, its on their account and subject to deductions by the jail such as the $2/day sustenance fee. The county jail rarely has people pay back unless they take the money on your account when you're released. I had ~$300 on my account when I was released thinking I'd get a check which I was going to use for a medical marijuana card so I wouldn't have another county jail visit later on. Nope, county jail took that money and said I owed an additional $55 for medical visits/medication so I paid that crap off. 99% of people released have no money on their account or used it all up (I debated this) so they often owe money upon release and are subject to a city lien on them. Or if they come back, the county jail will take a percentage of the money you have on you to pay off the lien/owed money. I unfortunately had $200 cash on me and the county jail immediately took $20 from me as part of an intake/processing fee. Local jails are part of the scheme also. Giving out free money just to be able to take it back.
When I was young I heard a story from my dad (a farmer) that there was a drought in the 1970s, my dad used the government support to buy fodder for the livestock (and kept the receipts) while other farmers had bought themselves a new car or tractor from the money but they had to pay back all the support while my dad never had to pay anything back.
Meanwhile I got literally nothing the whole time even when I didn't work. A friend told me about a guy that he knew who had homeless people sign papers and he processed them for the money.
You know, you can get like 30% of the fraud money if you report it and they convict. To be clear, I am not for snitching at all, but in this case, I am certainly for it because I saw some good honest people get wiped out, while dishonest people got rewarded. I think it is time we start getting those dishonest people what they deserve.
@@lipsontajgordongrunk4328 You had to have been unemployed due to the pandemic, not before. Those who were unemployed for whatever reason before COVID shutdowns hit and could never find a job afterword due to no one hiring, were just SOL.
@@lipsontajgordongrunk4328 This is not really true. Welfare was already a short term program under Clinton anyways. Anyone complaining about welfare had to ignore that it was already reformed by a Democrat. But the truth doesn't get Republican crooks elected.
I can say from my experience, at 55yrs old with nothing in any type of retirement account, if this Ponzi scheme collapses in the next 5 yrs I’ll be better off. What I can produce going forward from this point on will be out of this corrupted, immoral system. Convert this fiat garbage to gold and silver now. Any amount you can afford.
All of this makes me shudder as a nursing student ... Because here in Belgium we're getting more and more cases of covid, and we already struggle with being supplied the necessary equipment. For instance we re-use FFP2 masks that we keep in a box just because there's not enough of them to just throw them away. You never know what kind of overgarnment you're going to wear because it depends on which department the hospital has pillaged, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue. Losing precious time by having to fully desinfecting monitoring towers with hella-violent chemicals simply because we cannot have one per room or dedicate one to covid patients. We're really not ready for round 2, it would be a full collapse.
When I first heard about the size of the stimulus, I joked to my friends that the government would need an army of accountants to keep track of where the money was going, because people would try to steal it.
People are dumb. They had to make it easy for the good hard working citizens that don't have it in them for government shenanigans. Remember questioning the stimulus, and all the ramifications. Then someone said, "What would have happened without it?" And to be honest that was a good point. I think overall it did good.
Regarding your discussion at 10:50, the banks collecting the applications received a kickback for processing applications. The banks were incentivized to accept the frauds.
As someone who has worked in humanitarian/emergency projects for years I have to say that I did tell everyone what was going to happen. I said it before it happened, I said it when it was happening and I also said back in Feb/March 2020 that a day of reckoning would come. Experience in my specific field is something that is just not valued. So here we are. By the way, there's another huge refugee crisis building up in Syria. But not that anyone is interested in what I have to say, so I'll keep my head down and kick on with my own work. Have a nice day folks.
Geez guy, don"t waste comment space hinting at things. This might be the only arena with the least policing that one can get the word out under the radar.
It didn't take a genius knowing what would happen when Trump/Congress refused to allow any oversight whatsoever with the PPP loans. There's a long list of politicians who took out PPP loans in the hundreds of thousands to million dollar range that never owned a business or had a single employee. It's public knowledge. None of them will ever face any consequences.
So more people coming to developed countries to live on our tax money while committing crime and not making any poisitive contribution to the economy? Keep them in Syria.
It’s disgusting that multi-millionaires, such as Mark Wahlberg, and Robert DiNero got PPP loans for their business. Even the 80’s band, The Psychedelic Furs got a PPP loan.
That that would happen follows rather obviously from making it income-disruption based rather than wealth based. There were requirements that the money went to paychecks for employees. It was literally paying businesses to avoid layoffs. Not sure what you're actually on about, it largely worked.
Here in the UK, as you know, there have been questions about how the Government provided funds for PPE and almost anything else connected with the pandemic. I wonder if the amount of fraud equals or exceeds this.
In the UK the big one is the £38 BILLION on track and trace - you CAN NOT spend £38 billion on any one project in one year - its simply NOT possible. £38 billion will buy 5 Ford Class nuclear aircraft carriers - but it will take 10 years to build them. OR you can buy 2 of the 3 Georges Dam projects, that will take you 20 years. £38 billion is an UN SPENDABLE amount of money. The average cost globally for tracking apps was about £50 million The total covid corruption by the govt in the UK will exceed £100 billion - I promise you.
I don't trust your average person to handle large sums of money, let alone government officials. If they aren't padding their own pockets they're inevitably blowing it on useless stuff or losing it to scammers.
The absolute wildness of it all! People were literally trading tips on Twitter on how to score loans and unemployment benefits that they did not qualify for- as people were dying.
It's crazy to think about. I got hit hard early in the pandemic (March-April 2020,. I spent 38 days in Hospital. 16 of those days in ICU on a Ventilator fighting my way out of a coma). When I finally woke up, got off the Ventilator and started Rehab (still in a Hospital isolation ward). I was watching TV and it felt like I was waking up in a zombie-movie (Lockdowns, food-lines, etc).. Strange times we've (luckily) lived through.
In the uk we lost 40-70 billion in PPE fraud. A d even though the gov knows exactly who defrauded them they refused to do anything about it. Rich helping the rich as always
@himanshusingh5214 yes, well your not supposed to spend billions on whats essentially garbage. But thankfully the tories spent millions to burn this extra PPE
Since the year 2000, if you asked basically any western government "what is the biggest threat to your nation?" They would have told you "a global pandemic". The UK and US governments produced multiple reports saying such and that we should have plans in place and ready to go. Imagine, if instead of ignoring those reports and doing nothing. Governments had put in place legislation for programs such as PPP or Furlough, and had policies ready to go, instead of having to make it all up on the fly...
You could instead put in a testing system where people could do a simple swab everyday which would be electronically processed, knowing who has the virus you can quarantine those, you can keep people safe and let life go on as normal.
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Bush, and Yoshinao Kumagai
Meanwhile, the most up-voted comment here is someone lamenting that they didn't get in on the free money. Whole lot of people these days trained to believe getting away with financial crimes is "being smart". They also believe when some people get busted for this that it's unfair and certain people are "being unfairly targeted" for reasons other than the fraud, and also that other people were not smart because they got caught and that "i wouldn't have got caught if it was me". A lot of brazen criminality made its way into social mindset.
Well you have to understand that people naturally hate the government. Taxes, laws favoring the rich, so whatever leads them to get something back for free they will take it. But unfortunately the ones committing these crimes are people that don’t need the money in the first place.
@@en0n126 People are pissed they got screwed on things like student loans while millions of Americans fraudulently took billions in PPP loans that were completely forgiven, no questions asked. Every politician against student loan relief also received hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in PPP loans that were all forgiven. None of them had any real businesses or employees. The truth of the matter is that when the entire government is a scam, the only way to get ahead is to do the same. Trying to be moral in an immoral society doesn't work.
@@lombardo141 "Well you have to understand that people naturally hate the government." Oh really? Then wtf is all this BULLSHIT I see about self-entitled veterans or people defending veterans getting angry about BULLSHIT like "stolen valor"? Military is part of the government. So, hating government means hating military.
The crazy thing is I believe the regular statute of limitations with the IRS is usually 6 years for an audit but the statute of limitations for fraud is indefinite. So in some case we could be seeing federal clawback well into the next decade over this PPP/EIDL/ERTC boogaloo. EDIT: made my initial comment before finishing the video. The 10 years change is for criminal charges and civil enforcement, and this now matches the 10 years limitation for tax debt collection.
@@Bialy_110 years for items specific to this program and it’s for criminal charges IIRC. If they find you committed fraud they can assess a civil penalty at any point in the indefinite future I’ve also heard that if you got certain relief payments in excess of $100k from programs like the ERTC that they are having individual agents review those files manually. This will be a interesting next few years especially with the 2024 election likely impacting how strongly this enforcement will follow through.
@@alwayshere6956 I wouldn’t be so certain of that. I’m an enrolled agent and from what I’ve seen with my direct interactions with the IRS is they’re already a year behind on even the most menial things like basic level tax audits and mail. They absolutely by no means had the capacity to even perform their pre-existing functions in a timely manner before all of this emergency relief stuff. They will absolutely go after what is easiest for them to collect first but I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t start getting assessed notices and penalties until well into the next 2-3 years for even the most basic levels of fraud/negligence.
In my country any change to the statute of limitations for criminal cases affects only crimes made after the change. It is a constitutional (and maybe human rights treaty?) thing that criminal laws can't be retroactive. Doesn't the USA have something like that?
The fraud and waste understates the actual level of the problem. Nearly one third of the money was passed to states and counties where it was simply misspent or wasted. In addition, another quarter of the money likely went directly into federal agency overhead and costs.
there is also another quarter of that money which went directly into the companies of the relatives which work for the state.. or high positions or key point positions.. ect..(nepotism)
Marjorie Taylor Green got a chunk of this $, to “save” her business. She now complains she now earns less $ money in congress than she did as a businesswoman. Is she smart enough to realize she confessed to swindling $ from the govt?😊
I live in Pennsylvania, and state politicians are floating dumb ideas about just giving money back to (certain groups of) taxpayers instead of investing it into infrastructure or something. And not, like, underprivileged groups of taxpayers. Just random stuff like "let's give everybody who drove on the Turnpike (toll road) this year a tax rebate!" and "Let's give parents who bought their 16-year-old a $50,000 pickup truck this year a tax rebate!"
Let's not stop there. There's no evidence that any of the spending or interventions were beneficial. It was 100% waste, or worse. I hope the crooks bought themselves something nice. The rest of us only got ongoing excess mortality and an incoherent narrative that ignores it.
Can confirm - here in the 'hood there was an EXPLOSION of new entrepreneurs - I had friends with Waste Management companies- private security companies - Assisted Healthcare - And the weed man cashing covid relief checks for the community - BUSSILING TIMES i tell ya
The takeaway from me in all of this is that so much of this fraud occurred because of insufficient government record keeping, or ability to adhere proper record keeping practices; it's a failure of bureaucratic infrastructure that people were able to make fraudulent claims (dead people, convicts, etc). The US (being a group of United States) is fairly poorly positioned to prevent these acts. Bad actors can simply cross state lines and act with relative anomynity due to (possibly justified) government information sharing protocols. I imagine that certain states were _disproportionately_ subject to fraud due to bad/archaic data handling protocols, and I hope but do not expect that those states will be held in some way accountable for how those practices enabled criminal activity. Yes, a lot of fraud took place (and no one likes that), but I can't help but think that a significant chunk could have been avoided if certain government agencies didn't enable it so easily.
This. And speaking as someone who has worked in a small city gov for 15+ years,. the other squeeze of that is that Citizens (perhaps rightfully so) want "as much services as possible,,. for as low taxes as possible". There's a reason why the Gov is so inefficient and sloppy and poorly run. It's constantly understaffed and under-resourced. (especially on smaller local levels). As you mention, very few systems are "inter-state connected".. so all someone has to do is move state to state and keep re-doing their grift. I'm not sure how we fix any of that (unlikely given the USA is what,. the 5th largest country in the entire world). Technology does exist to improve and tighten scrutiny on various systems,. but the people in charge of those systems have to work hard every day to make smart ethical decisions (hard to do when so many around them are not).
The failure was manufactured on purpose. Trump refused to allow any oversight at all with PPP loans. The fact that anyone could have seen that at the time and not realize immediately that this was a scam is beyond me.
So government bureaucracy (the world over) showed, yet again, what it does best: incompetence. That so many people believe that government is their lord and savior is mind-blowing.
OMG why didn't I think of that! Brilliantly clever like a fox. I could've been on Facebook cryin about shutdowns and my fake business then complain about SL forgiveness.... Honesty doesnt pay, just lie and act like a victim when caught
..If your college degree doesn't produce enough value for you to pay it off, it certainly doesn't have enough value for your neighbor to pay it off. "Dreams soon become nightmares when IRRESPONSIBLE borrowing becomes a way of life". 🤔🤔.
@@lilblackduc7312 if your neighbors can reimburse the depositors in bank failures thru things like FDIC insurance, they can also do similar things for any sort of financial risk. you just don't like that one.
@@lilblackduc7312 Odd how almost every decent job in America outside of very specific union trades (which would instantly drop in pay if everyone moved to those jobs instead of college) requires a degree, yet almost every job that requires a degree in America doesn't pay enough to pay off the degree. It's almost as if blaming people who just want an education and a decent job isn't the right way to go about it.
That is what caused the inflation. Massive stimulus programs coupled with everywhere being shut resulted in everyone having loads of disposable income, which they all started spending after lockdown causing demand to exceed supply raising prices and causing inflation (along with supply chain issues from the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine).
corpse looter has been a thing since forever basically. We know that some people would do anything to get their hands on some goods so it's no surprise that this amount of money reeled in the worst humanity has to offer. And while govs could have/ should have done better, it's hard to blame them in the midst of something we haven't faced in modern history basically. what matters now is to get as much of the money back and to make those fraudster accountable, and considering the circumstances I wish they'd do like what UK tends to do: name and shame. this is more than just stealing some tax money, this is literally stealing from people dying or surviving, this can't go unpunished or just giving the money back at this point.
So I realize Patrick is a small L libertarian economics type of guy. But I always appreciate that he doesn’t often insert his own opinion into videos. You could walk away from his videos having a pretty unbiased take away of financial events.
The bigger problem is the actual direction of policy. When all of this was going on, there was a major banking crisis as well as the pandemic, and a lot of the direction of the policy wasn't so much personal relief or direct business relief per se, but rather the usual "prime the pump" or other cash flood the economy during hard times mentality types, many of which preferred greatly to push too much money into the system rather than be stingy with it. Economically, they were more concerned about getting as much cash into the economy as quickly as possible, and even the easiest of safeguards was probably seen by far too many as being just a little too slow in their ham fisted efforts. Why, even money given to fraudsters will end up in bank accounts, being spent, and even being recirculated as taxes when finally spent. They cared more about the fact money was actually flowing, and flowing quickly, then if the programs were being followed accurately. They cared more about bolstering the economy at the time, and not so much "entitlement' or who was "supposed" to get money. Many will go unpunished, as when there is enough offenders, prosecuting them all becomes difficult to impossible. The government will start to recollect some loans and get some money back. But, in the end, even with the current clean up, many would say the policy, despite massive fraud, was a success in their end goal.
How do you write all that and not even mention that the govt literally spends money that doesn't exist? Lol. It's hilarious to me that people are talking about fraud without acknowledging that our entire economy fundamentally runs on fraud as a base policy
I think people failed to understand this part. Because a total economic collapse could have happened without it. The few billion lost here and there, actually saved a few trillion, and made lives of everyone better. Aka the cost of doing business
yeah its for the greater good, but if the people who got the money were sintgy it would be bad since they would sit with the money and not help float the boat. its dificult since surely the same money could have gone to buying infrastructures and equipment for hospitals. where did these moneys end up.
In California it was inevitable since the state made it available to undocumented workers as well. And I don't mean solely illegal immigrants. A lot of Californians said they had businesses like personal training, nanny, hair stylist, yoga instructor and the like where they had worked at say the homes of wealthy individuals; that the pandemic made them unable to work and therefore they qualified for the benefits. So a lot of unregistered businesses were able to apply for PPP aid as well as unemployment benefits. Its just impossible to track who is legit and who is not when you don't require proof of work or documentation of employment, No W-2 forms, 1099 filings for contractors or TINs, Taxpayer Identification Number were required. And since the state essentially opened up accounts on the applicants behalf with Bank of America I believe, KYC regulations were thrown out the window. So people who probably couldn't even open a checking account were able to get $50,000 dollar PPP grants given to them no questioned asked with bogus small business paperwork. The unemployment benefits don't really bother me, since it was only about $400ish dollars a week after tax which is pretty much impossible to survive on as the average rent for a studio is around $2,000 dollars a month. So most people who could work, had the skills to make more money, needed to work and did work; so a vast majority receiving unemployment were the bottom 10% and the most vulnerable economically. Some people probably did work under the table while receiving unemployment benefits but that happens all the time, Pandemic or not. And it allowed lots of Californians to still consume to some degree which was essential to keeping the businesses that were still open afloat. PPP fraud is a much larger issue in my opinion as the grants are substantially higher. There are a few good reads in things like the LA Times where some businesses received grants upwards of $1.4 million dollars to keep their employees working, and then later laid them off so they could receive unemployment benefits and the PPP grant money was pocketed by owners under false pretenses.
The corruption went both ways. Government agencies often refused to pay eligible people. They would make up bogus reasons, then make them wait over a year for a hearing. Once the hearing date arrived, they would retroactively change reasons for denial or require phone hearings for audio impaired at the last minute, then find against you for not being able to hear them at the hearing. This type of behavior makes people see the whole system as corrupt. The dishonest rewarded and the honest denied. It makes people cynical and disregard the rules the next time they see an opportunity.
the next thing that will be "discovered" was that the vaxes were approved based on junk dodgy science and the process wasn't independent where regulators "approved" therapeutic goods after first world governments had already raced each other to sign $billion contracts for those TGs
There were plenty of news stories at the time regarding cons and grifters scamming these funds. There was plenty of legit proof ,. so I don't think it qualifies as a "conspiracy". Seemed to me that it became apparent pretty fast any one who wanted to "make a fast buck" could do so. (as sad as that observation is).
Amazed that anyone would suggest that as much as 90% of PPP fraud “loans” were used for legitimate purposes. That number is surely much lower. That we choose to flood liquidity into the country in such a poorly regulated manner shocks the conscience. And then we get to live with the follow-on inflationary effects.
Don't worry. The same politicians who gave out those "loans" (and took them for themselves as well) and then completely forgave them are also the same ones who are against things like food stamps, student loan relief, and free school lunches for poor kids. They keep getting voted in with loud applause, so there are never any consequences.
Wow, just wow. Like I knew it was bad but damn. I was lucky and had an essential job and worked through the whole pandemic and never needed assistance, so I never went near any of these systems. This sounds like the whole thing was a trainwreck.
Some people look at a situation and think "that's awful, the government should never have given out all that money in the first place." Other people look at all the good that the overwhelming majority of the funds brought about, and just blame the criminals for doing crimes.
Disasters are indeed abused for personal gain. In India the Finance Ministry officials had handled the COVID crises very conservatively by focussing assistance in the form of food grains supply to poor people without throwing money around which fraudsters could have misused. You can do a study on the strategy followed in India.
😂 our government and its administration, so sad. Funding needless wars, broken programs, unable to find a home for commercial nuclear waste, and political leaders who don’t or can’t read the legislation before they vote on it.😢
This hapened everywhere. Even i received 250 per kid without needing it. And my company received 15000 without needing it because we are very frugal and so our company has no debt
@@letsRegulateSociopaths drive thank the car industrials - water - thank nature / air - thank nature ... You have other benefits in mind right ? Like unemployment ones ?
I agree that it is very disheartening to see the public seem to take advantage of a situation in where unity was needed more than ever. Many Americans showed their true nature during that time, and I have been very disappointed with my people for years because of it.
GREAT VIDEO!! I really enjoy your commentary and research. Excellent work, too bad it is just further proof of the "soul sickness" our society is crumbling under.
it would have been smarter to just mail checks titled to "whom it may concern" only to USA addresses, to make sure foreign hackers werent stealing the money that was allocated for people who needed it
These numbers would be WAY HIGHER if they included all of the Corporations who didn't need any of this money or tax breaks. Most of them did stock buybacks & double digit dividends to their shareholders with the all that PPP and free 0% interest Quant easing.
Thank you for your always interesting observations served with a side of pithy humor. I watch your videos and am immediately drawn into another one and it is a pleasure.
Hello from New Zealand. We had a similar program. I benefitted from the equivalent of this. My business suffered but the ease of which I obtained the benefit was so easy that I had the suspicion that there had to be freeloaders.
If anyone knows someone who commmited fraud, report it, especially if it was above $1 Million. If you provide inside information to the justice dept on a silver platter you are entitled for up to 30% of the assets clawed back.
But the Crime of the Centuries is the private creation of money supply (not cash) since 1694 in England. This is now a massive loss of seigniorage for the UK as about 97% of UK money supply is now created out of nothing by private commercial banks (ref. Bank of England Q1 2014 Quarterly Bulletin). This is now the Western macroeconomic model so things can only get worse for the people.
Essentially, all you had to do to get a PPP loan was to apply for it -- free money I personally know three businessmen, one in real estate development, one in construction, and one in electrical and plumbing supplies, who very quickly applied for and received the money even though they had zero need for it. As of a few months ago, 92% of the PPP loans had neen forgiven completely or in large part. Even if it was determined you needed to repay part of the loan, keep in mind that the first round of PPP loans were provided at 1% interest. Again, free money. So, many tens of billions of dollars were spewed into the economy and given to a great many people who did not need the money, but felt that they could not turn down an essentially free loan. You can't control that kind of inflation - - it's already been spewed into the economy.
As a small business owner in Australia I couldn't get any aid in the pandemic as I was a videographer. If I had been a Photographer, or a casino or run a brothel I could have had aid. If I had a friend in the UK Tory Government I could have set up a firm selling face masks and made a fortune. If I had been the CEO of Qantas or Harvey Norman or ny other big company, I could have taken lots of public money, Laid off staff, and awarded myself and my shareholders huge dividends and not paid the money back. As usual whenever the big finance consultants are involved there is plenty of economy saving aid, and plenty of opportunities to rort the government and the taxpayer. PWC and the like did a great job for their shareholders and the super rich throughout the pandemic. And those people who mention their relatives rorting the system... did you shop them in... or did you expect someone else to do the dirty work for you and then blame the government for your complicit behaviour?
Thanks for covering this. The narrative was how stimi checks to people boomed demand. No way, there had to be hundreds of billions of dollars if not a trillion of free money going to enrich giant entities and people, thus removing tens of millions from having to work, bubbling asset purchases and real estate, and huge Inflation for all. I hope they really get to the bottom, but damage is ongoing.
Our politicians are quite on this failure of theirs. We should automatically clean all of them from office and start over. That includes all of The permanent employees in D.C..
I agree that some additional level of scrutiny would have been good. But it seems that way you substitute loss via fraud for administrative overheads - and given how politics in the us seems to favor private enterprise, no telling how much of hat overhead would just be blown up. So to me it seems 10% fraud loss versus low bureaucracy implementation might not be such a bad deal. Anyone looked into that?
The scrutiny wasn't necessarily very hard to implement. Criss checking databases in today's age isn't the hardest thing to do. Crawling through the data may take a lot of computer power, but you can basically but as much computing power as you want for relatively cheap.
@@jeffshackleford3152 Fully agree - there is always some 80/20 thing, so it seems a 20/80 solution could have been viable (do at least 20% of the possible checks and do those 20% "that don't cost much" - whatever that would mean). Instead 0/100 seems to have been implemented. But when you look at defense spending for example: There is always some flashy new system produced, marvel of technology that might even pull some people into its fascination who are more averse to the whole arms thing. Who wasn't fascinated the first time they heard of and saw pictures of the stealth fighter avoiding radar detection. Yet for each of those: how many projects cost hundreds of millions and (way) more and never deliver anything? Is for example the church of scientology, who don't pay their staffers anything, receiving millions in workers protection aid really a bigger scam?
I think you have a point, but 'better scrutiny' isn't a high bar here. 5 figure sums of business support were given here (by local government officials) to the owners of newly founded companies that had never traded and were founded after the support scheme was extended. The rules here required, amongst other things, the business to have provable tradimg/employees for months years *prior* to covid. Sure, you can fake that, and the person checking might not smell a rat, but if receiving company registration date is after the start of the scheme and they get money, no checking was being done at all.
I forget the name of it, but you can look up who got $ and how much. 2 of my ex employers got money and were only closed for one month in Florida. None of this was shared to employee.
But what would be the alternative? In my opinion, some fraudsters should not stop us from helping the ones in need or put unbearable restrictions on this help. Punish the fraudsters you catch later.
The point was that there were databases they could have used to cross reference and weed out a chunk of ineligible applicants. It would not have eliminated all fraud of course. But if people saw others being rejected from receiving benefits, then the sense that this was a complete free-for-all and socially acceptable (even if not legal) would have been blunted.
Let’s steer this back to the actual issue at hand. How about all the corporations, politicians, and businesses that stole billions in support while we got 2 relief checks. Businesses were paid millions. The company I was working for sacked all of us and got over 1 million dollars of taxpayer money to help tie them over but none of us saw it. Who cares about what China did, I want to know why businesses got billions of dollars in aid from the taxpayer but we got nothing. They could have froze all mortgages and added the months not paid to the end of total time, gave us all food stamp benefits and free utilities. How can you say that no one can work but still charge us living expenses???? Don’t let them fool you either with fake employment numbers that aren’t real or even based off how many people are working. Big cities are rampant with crime, suffering, and have nots from the pandemic while businesses got billions.
Excellent video as always, Patrick. As a fund accountant, I like seeing fellow investment operations professionals discuss global markets, fiscal policy, etc.
Rule #1: Once the Government has your money it's no longer your money. Rule #2: The Government is terrible at managing money because it's not theirs either. Rule #3:
It would have taken a tiny amount of analysis to filter out most of the fraud. And the "legitimate" money was unnecessary most of the time. Only the restaurants and travel related biz closed. Other businesses carried on.
Patrick, I live outside of Seattle and the hospitals were NEVER overrun. Never. I kid you not, staff were not coming in due to the lack of need. Skeleton crews at best..
Honestly, Patrick, I legit think you have one of the best channels on RU-vid. Top 5 for me. You’ve educated me and gave me further reading material which has only educated me further. Keep it up mate.
This is not true at all. What an ignorant statement. But then, you blindly supported Iraq didn't you? We can always tell whose got the blood on their hands by their Idiocracy...
Trust me, if that ever happens (I’m going to leave the judgment of the principle of it, for a separate debate)…. the Resulting widespread scamming to take advantage of whatever the government passes… will be another Yuge, epic-fail. basically anytime the government prints money, a big chunk will be stolen/squandered. This is our reality.
@@basedinspace Yes, we do, considering every single politician who is against student loan relief took out hundreds of thousands in PPP loans, then completely forgave them, no questions asked. It's almost as if allowing politicians to steal our tax dollars, but being alright with that while punishing actual taxpayers isn't a great way to run a society. It's not even printing money, as all the student loans are federally backed already. It would just be writing them off. Making people pay off the student loans is a great way to take money out of the economy that is already teetering on recession.
During the pandemic my family and I were busy trying to keep alive, while folks were out scamming. It's fascinating hearing these stories now. Also a big one at the time were the 'sou sous' scams in the Caribbean. Would love a video on that Patrick.
The IRS received additional funding and an expansion of programs like offering individual tax filings for free. Paying for software for a simple filing. 90% of people I've heard from mom and pop CPA firms that specialize in serving the local community, anecdotal. The IRS did a nice thing by creating that. No other government agency has the same mission as the IRS. Look up how much revenue they collect. Not just from individuals but businesses. And even where the local tax authorities are involved, businesses pay enormous amounts that fund essential local government services indirectly. It's a nice arrangement when everyone treats the system fairly. A lot of people worried when the IRS got more funding, but I interpreted it as: they return on that taxpayer funding makes everyone better off. Some tax fraud always happens each year. Billions more than the IRS costs the US. In other words they didn't have resources to do much to pursue bigger investigations at the scale necessary for a country as big as the US. The bigger prize and reason why giving the IRS a bigger budget is that it's necessary. Spending $10bn extra a year on the IRS will yield taxpayer fund recoveries in excess of that. It's reducing waste of your hard earned taxes. This is when the IRS is a bulldog on a leash. IRS-CI is criminal investigations. There are IRS agents who act more as law enforcement and undergo similar trainings to a police officer but they usually have CPAs from what I recall. Really cool people, cool job. And imagine hearing CPA, OPEN UP! We need to talk about taxes. I absolutely support having governments aggressively pursuing fraud. Anyone with a job in the US is paying into systems they expect to be there when they need them.
You are naive or dishonest. The tax code is too complex for ordinary people to be able to handle. People end up making mistakes unless they shell out big money for a CPA. Then because of the mistakes in the totally unmanageable mess you need a team of accountants and attorneys to handle even for a middle class household, they are treated like criminals. Actually, the IRS is criminal. Thats something average people often cant afford. They have to pay taxes and on top of that the overhead of paying taxes. It would be best for everyone if we abolished the IRS and went with a sales tax administered by the states because, contary to the lies, its usually middle class people who get screwed by this system which is designed to entrap them in the quagmire. Most of the spending on the federal government goes to things which do not tangibly benefit normal people due to all the waste corruption and fraud.
I don't understand this system of doing your taxes yourself. In Sweden, as a private citizen the tax bureau sends you a pre-filled form of what you owe, and if you want to make adjustments you do. Then you just sign it and send it back. Of course the tax bureau (skatteverket) needs plenty of resources though to be able to handle doing everyone's taxes. And their customer service is also the best in the country. If you are unsure about anything you just call them up. They even have a chatbot that actually can answer your questions!
@@jameskeefe1761 There are people who make careers out of knowing specific pieces of the tax code. No one has a magical hat that tells them every reg and every situation. If youve worked Pa tax service lines you'd know it's like... Hey Jim with 20 years of experience, you need help from someone with 2 years of experience on this part of the tax code. It's a mile wide and an inch deep. Applying tax regs and coming up with mitigation strategies (which is what the 1040 form literally does for you). Tax is like saying physics but the good news is a machine can digest and analyze the tax code and apply it to specific situations based on user input. That's probably the future of tax but they already have tools to do that. Simplifications. I'm not going to give too much about my background but you have the wrong idea about the IRS being criminal. If you did an "RoI" on taxpayer dollars going to different organizations, the IRS is at the top of the list. It's an essential service and anyone who says otherwise is probably not a business mind. Saying the IRS defrauds people as if its in their practice? No, but they don't like when people post tiktoks about bonus depreciation on investment properties (their bed and breakfast properties. The guy thought his W-2 covered that and therefore it was a non-taxable business) Do you want to work in sanitation? I don't, but the jobs pay well. Tax. Accounting. You can never win and no one wants to know about the field. Most discussions end after "I work in accounting" vs. "I'm a CPA." Most CPAs don't even prepare tax forms for individuals. CPA does not mean someone does tax work.
@@jameskeefe1761 Also the CPA exam is a couple thousand dollars usually covered by any public (accounting services primary operating activity) firm and even within industry they will pay for study materials. The license itself and tests cost less than some basic paperwork. Have an H1b worker? That process costs a company more than an entire CPA licensure process typically. That is why my assumption is that you aren't aware of what accounting is as a field. Most people aren't. CPAs often go to work for public companies that have reporting requirements. Management signs off on their assertions, the financial statements & other disclosures. In the US external audits are required for assurance. So a high level of certainty and issuance of an opinion. There could be CPAs on the audit team that audits what the industry CPA managers present to them... and then there's the CPAs who serve the local community in small accounting firms that specialize in one or two things such as individual tax.
@@CainXVII Sweden is more the size of a US state in population and landmass, but your tax regs are very different. The tool you described is exactly what the IRS finally developed. 👏 🙌 An online tool that does exactly what tax software does. It just simplifies all the precise language into simple questions. Intuit was fined $141m for its TurboTax software for charging to file electronically, which is free. The CPA preparing a tax form is mainly there to give credentials to submit the filing and sign their name off that they did their due diligence. That is how a CPA doing personal income tax return filing for a living more or less applies that license. Of the exams needed to get a CPA license in a US state, only one covers tax in depth. There's 4 or 5 if you're in California. This is just filling out basic information that a lot of people don't track. Pay stubs and such. Students in college for accounting can do these forms. Average people do their own filings all the time because they read it and understand that it's like any other government document and not a trap unless you're knowingly trying to avoid tax. Mitigation(tax) means just minimize the amount owed. That's it. Finally the US gets this much needed change. Sweden probably just collects from employers, I'd have to check but I imagine it's simpler. The US has a lot of sections that exist for different conditions. Worked in different states providing a service? Well the state wants something in return because the person used public roads and utilities while they were there. The government doesn't sell things, basic statement but it's important because it treats revenue (taxes being one) completely differently due to the abstract nature of what the government does. Let's say your town repairs a road for tens of thousands of dollars. People who never use that road in your town will still have a portion of their tax contribution mixed into whatever fund that money came out of. A company can categorize the expense and cash flows because if it's the business that repair the road, they had an exchange of goods and services in a traditional sense. The job costed the repair company a certain amount but they can tie those expenses directly to the road repair. The workers, equipment, materials used. The government sees the transaction differently. This is why tax is complicated. Accounting is vast. That's what I'm conveying hopefully. The tax code is complicated but it's got to factor in federal state and local governments. The US is huge and has a system that makes it so states and localities can modify to suit their needs. An agricultural town in the Midwest is considering very different things than the City of New York (gov). So the tax code is dense but structured in a pretty methodical way in most areas for private citizens. Tax is very transactional and the IRS is just the one carrying out the tax collection. Growing IRS means more complex compliance audits. In reality even brain surgeons get audited because they're part of the 99.9%... they just have the resources to hire an attorney but it's still money out the door and it can be a recurring problem for them that disrupts their life too. But it's just the federal government's executive organization for enforcing what's written. It isn't their fault their profession pays more than most. They spent 12-14 years just learning to become a surgeon able to practice... those people get audited all the time. And being under audit doesn't mean they're taking the house car and family. People need to do some basic diligence and Google things or read the big text on their favorite day trading app that says tax documents. It's up to the investor to understand what they're looking at. But the IRS gives a huge allowance for people to redress issues. It's only when the intent was to deceive that they investigate you criminally, or if you ignore years of their requests... it isn't like talking to the police. The IRS doesn't even talk to US law enforcement unless required. It was a large public figure that demonstrated how difficult it is to get the IRS to share anything. Why? It's just as sensitive as medical information. The IRS uses a lot of paper and whatnot because historically that has been more secure. The IT security infrastructure for the IRS has to be ironclad. Ironclad. Because even the most private of public figures have to file these forms too :) 😃. Sweden is a nice place to live and the US is a great place to work if money is what motivates someone. It doesn't for me. Sweden enjoys these partly because the pros of higher tax rates across the board are that you can afford nice programs for public benefit. It's also more widely understood by Swedes why it exists. Sweden is ahead in many of its policies but temper that with my analogy of a state. Sweden has fewer citizens than smaller US states, so your tax hierarchy is more: federal and local. The US has states that all function differently and sometimes people move states and don't time it around the Tax Year/FY
