A Spirit Airlines flight arrives at Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airport, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., April 23, 2026. REUTERS It’s a strange conundrum: If a company gets too big and successful and dares earn too much money, the US government accuses it of being an evil monopoly and tries to break it up. And if it loses too much money, the government swoops in and bails it out with taxpayer dollars — as we’ve seen multiple times now, from banking to the auto industry. Rewarding failure and punishing success isn’t a very smart economic game plan.  In the latest chapter of this saga, the federal government is reportedly about to provide a half-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout to Spirit Airlines. Aren’t you excited to learn you may become a shareholder? It’s not clear how one bankrupt institution — the US government, $39 trillion in debt and counting — can bail out another one, in this case the nation’s sixth-largest airline , with less than 5% of the market.…