system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why don’t we just let major airlines collapse?


Hear me out. The airline industry has asked for $50bn in support to avoid bankrupty. Meanwhile these same companies have spend 80-98% of their free cash buying back their own company stock over the last 10 years. American Airlines alone has spent $12.5bn to buy back stocks. This of course is done to reduce overall divident costs and increase the share price. 

On top of that, under the new US corporate tax code all of these companies have lowered their tax bills by billions of dollars. The idea of the tax bill was that this money would be used for investment in technology/R&D and go to employees. Again a lot of this money ended up being used to buy back stocks. 

Individuals are expected to save up 3-6 months of emergency funds but yet these giant corporations can’t whether any storm. Let them fold and in a free market the void left in supply will be filled by somebody else.
gpt
It is cheaper for the government to give them the bankruptcy security than it is to deal with the crippling effects that the unemployment of their employees would cause. 

It's important to remember that when we talk about large corporations, we are talking about profit margins of 1-2% per year for the extremely successful ones. Their billions of dollars is not sitting in a vault where dudes in top hats and monocles are bathing in it; ita tied up in assets, investments, and people. 

That is to say, the company is one of the tools through which money is distributed into the economy, and this tool works as a value multiplier. Losing a 50bn chunk of the economy by allowing the companies to collapse would possibly 500bn or more in damage to the public. 

We'd have to pay unemployment to their employees, we'd have to wash all debt for them, meaning lenders have less money and wont invest as confidently elsewhere, we'd have to store or destroy their fleets (who's gonna buy all the planes?), regional government will lose income from property tax on office buildings, etc. The list goes on. 

So its not as simple as "well they're gonna go out of business, sucks for them". The collateral damage would be extensive.