Gifts, Grifts, and Gambles: The Social Logics of the Small Business Administration’s Covid Relief Programs

In March 2020, the U.S. federal government launched the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as a part of a broader effort to shore up an economy collapsing under the pressures of the global coronavirus epidemic. The PPP was the largest of a group of Small Business Administration (SBA) programs that used business loans and loan forgiveness as policy tools. Lawmakers touted the loans as a way to prevent joblessness by protecting the small businesses that employ half the U.S. workforce. Despite being promoted as a life preserver for the nation’s most vulnerable and imperiled businesses, the initial rollout of these SBA loans systematically advantaged larger, wealthier companies and businesses owned by white people. Drawing from news reports, the talk explains how the SBA loans worked as a substantial gift for some recipients, an opportunity for grift for others, and a stressful gamble for most. I argue that rather than see the SBA programs’ flaws as the unforeseeable outcome of unprecedented historical forces, we should see them as emblematic of U.S. credit programs as a whole, both in terms of the complex style of statecraft of which they are a part, and in terms of the inequities evinced in their rollout.

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