Let's do some quick math here. Let's say $5k a month for an employee coming out to $60k a year. 500 million / 5,000 comes out to 100,000 in my calculation. So assuming I'm not making any obvious mistakes on the numbers here, they could have paid 100,000 workers each $5k for that month instead.
I'm no CFO, but here's a novel strategy: hire human beings and have them do labor, it seems more cost effective. 😜