If individual reparations are to be paid to black Americans, should we increase the sum by the portion of the population they represent to account for the fact that if the government is paying them and if they are taxpayers then they are helping pay for their own reparations? How would the funding work?
Discussion
I can’t speak knowingly to what’s just and what these human beings are entitled to….but what about living tax free for life? And their descendants.
There’s no price that can be paid out to make it right, retroactively….But no taxes forwards in time and genealogy? That at least seems like the right scale and scope.
That paying people off thing? That’s rich white people shit.
Seems like you gotta cut it off at some point..
The thought behind it, my thought, is that the pain, the segregation, knows no ends.
But, perhaps, they could find a beginning date and run it to date of activation.
But honestly how to repair this blithe on humanity
Also there’s an unseen benefit imo; observers (of whatever color creed etc) might witness a payout (reparations) and that will trigger a response,no matter how repressed or buried, of “they’re getting something, and I’m not”.
This happens no matter how much it’s owed, makes sense, whatever.
Obviously there’s degrees but the extreme response of jealousy or anger (those ignorant enough to participate in bigoted think) would exist.
What I’m getting at is, I would think the benefit of the absence of taxes would be easier, socially, to accept and on a broader scale than give any segment of the population million dollar checks.
Could be wrong, no data here other than how the idea strikes me.
Blacks as a group are net govt beneficiaries, i.e. they receive more in benefits than they pay in tax so they are not helping in that regard.