"A Cheap, Race-Neutral Way to Close the Racial Wealth Gap..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a physician and would have blown this entire account on partying in college.

Ok. But how do you think your Medicaid patients would have spent it?

I work in Medicaid case management and love my patients and my job. I spend my days connecting people with resources (which are many in this city including free childcare for everyone under a certain income).

But 95% of them would blow through a 50K one time payment within a few months.
5-10% would probably use it for long term goals and/or education.

I honestly think this would be worth it---we could change the trajectory of 5-10% at the cost of losing 90% of the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

+1

And all the jerks saying that it would worsen drug problems and subsidize Cadillac can GTFO with that bullshit.

+2

Bunch of racist jerks making stupid comments from their position of privilege

+1

It’s disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a physician and would have blown this entire account on partying in college.

Ok. But how do you think your Medicaid patients would have spent it?

I work in Medicaid case management and love my patients and my job. I spend my days connecting people with resources (which are many in this city including free childcare for everyone under a certain income).

But 95% of them would blow through a 50K one time payment within a few months.
5-10% would probably use it for long term goals and/or education.

I honestly think this would be worth it---we could change the trajectory of 5-10% at the cost of losing 90% of the money.

I have two particular concerns about reparations of this kind. How do we tell millions of poor whites and Hispanics that they aren't getting $50k while their black neighbors are getting it. It's one thing for moralizing UMC do-gooders to talk casually about giving free money to blacks because you're already comfortably off. But try saying that to poor white people who don't have any money at all, and there's plenty of them. It's an extremely divisive thing to do.

My second concern is then what? After the 95% have blown through the money one way or another, then what? Have we solved the problem?

[Anonymous]

How is it race-neutral if we know which people tend to have children they can't afford to raise?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it race-neutral if we know which people tend to have children they can't afford to raise?

The Mormons?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fascinating thing about all this is that "white" America is rapidly declining as a share of the population and the country rapidly diversifying. I think the reason why the racial, or rather, black racial issues, have become so intensified and bitter in recent years is that the old argument of blaming all their problems on racism has gotten harder when at the same time tens of millions non-whites have immigrated to the United States and in that time, despite not being white, have outperformed black America, and many have even outperformed white America. This substantially weakens the old racial arguments.

That's why it's shifted away from personal, direct individual racism to institutional racism. 50 years ago the racial argument was based on too many individual racists, teachers, employers, politicians, neighbors, being racist, and that to fight racism you had to combat the racists populating the institutions through educating them, and welcoming blacks into the institutions. But flash forward 50 years of Affirmative Action and a white population that is incredibly more tolerant and race blind, and (which is often ignored these days) a flourishing black middle class and many more blacks in leadership position, so many of the problems facing particularly poorer blacks remain. Blacks continue to commit disproportionate amounts of crime and urban deprived neighborhoods remain disproportionately black.

Now the blame for the problems is shifting, not to any individual responsibility, but to a focus on "institutional racism," calling for racism within the framework of American society and American institutions rather than the individuals, and by making it institutional, the proponents override all the current racial tolerance and diversity and affirmative action programs to reach back to the past as an excuse for today's behavior. That's why if Hispanic gang members shoot each other, it's not racism, but when black gang members shoot each other, it's racism. That's why poor white people in places of generational poverty, such as rural America and Appalachia, are not absolved of their poverty, and even openly mocked and trashed, but poor blacks in inner cities are absolved of any responsibilities for their poverty and it's racist to make fun of their cultural behaviors.

I do see and understand why. A focus on blaming "institutional" racism of the past to present allows people to avoid looking at other things more close to home and provides an easy scrapegoat for angers and frustrations.

But ultimately, I suspect it won't go much beyond severely worsening many things. And, ironically, it is still going to the white man with a begging bowl.

No quotes needed for the institutional in institutional racism. It is in fact very real. The US racial caste system puts Black descendants of slavery and Native Americans at the lowest ranks below non-white immigrants. The failure of people like you to acknowledge it, allows it to continue. There are also systems that keep people impoverished which often overlap with race, but that doesn't change the fact that the biggest predictor of how much lifetime wealth you will accumulate is race. A white high school dropout earns more than a black college grad because institutions protect white mediocrity by deferring black opportunity.

How does it put them below if they have the following that immigrants don't have:

- they speak fluent English (most of the immigrants come here either without speaking any English or with a very poor English)
- they was offered free English grammar education for 12 years (all the immigrants can hope is free ESL classes in a local library at the large urban areas)
- they have family support (sometimes extensive family with grandparents, siblings, aunts and anckles)
- they have legal status to work
- they have Affirmative Action to go to college
- they can join military (for some immigrants this is not an option)
- if they are poor, they are eligible for financial aid in college (immigrants don't )
- they can drive (a lot of immigrants moving from big cities or rural areas never drove)

All the listed above put blacks way above any white or non-white immigrant at the starting point.

I think if you are going to argue this stuff, you need to do your research first. You’ve obviously thought about this a lot and formed your own opinion but it’s also obvious that you have not done any substantive reading about racism. Start with crystal Fleming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lol. $50,000 for each poor baby. What could possibly go wrong?

LOL 50,000 in mortgage interest deductions in only 5 years. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one incentivizes a purchase of a permanent home for a family, the other incentivizes cranking out additional babies when you're poor. What am I missing?

I actually like this idea a lot better than cash grants. (Althoufh gtfo with the cranking out babies stuff.) I’d spread it out over more years, though—the average mortgage is 15 or 30 years. So what happens when somebody buys a house in a better neighborhood, some scammer mortgage company gives them a subprime loan based on the idea that in 5 years they’ll actually have the income to pay the mortgage, and then we see mass defaults like we did on 2008? Plus, $10k a year is a lot of mortgage interest, so spreading the $50k out over more years would be ok. You’d have to address the impact this would have on house prices in medium-income neighborhoods, though, because the new competition would force these house prices up.

This, Head Start for all, better public schools, college grants, fixing the prison system and crime laws, and healthcare for all would be more targeted. After all, if the goal is wealth-building and education, why not do that explicitly?

This package would probably be more expensive, but I could get behind something that actually fixes the systemic causes of income and wealth inequality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a physician and would have blown this entire account on partying in college.

Ok. But how do you think your Medicaid patients would have spent it?

I work in Medicaid case management and love my patients and my job. I spend my days connecting people with resources (which are many in this city including free childcare for everyone under a certain income).

But 95% of them would blow through a 50K one time payment within a few months.
5-10% would probably use it for long term goals and/or education.

I honestly think this would be worth it---we could change the trajectory of 5-10% at the cost of losing 90% of the money.

I’m the pp arguing for a more expensive package of reforms. How would wasting 90-95% of $800b that we don’t have “actually be worth it”? You want to give one group, in one point in time, a windfall that you think most will blow. This saddles everybody’s children with massive debt for generations to come, it’s a windfall to scammers and price gougers, it’s divisive, and most important, it doesn’t fix systemic causes of racism. Or leave much money over for fixing the systemic causes of racism.

Or were you being sarcastic?

[Anonymous]

The only sane people who would support this are scammers, fraudsters, and people who sell things like cars and booze and lottery tickets because they are the ones who are getting that 50k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it race-neutral if we know which people tend to have children they can't afford to raise?

The Mormons?

Serious question: if you get a windfall of 50k from the government, are you obligated to tithe 10 percent to the Church? Or does it not count as income under the rules? I'm not being rude, I legitimately do not know and I have plenty of family in the Church (and obviously nothing against Mormons).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fascinating thing about all this is that "white" America is rapidly declining as a share of the population and the country rapidly diversifying. I think the reason why the racial, or rather, black racial issues, have become so intensified and bitter in recent years is that the old argument of blaming all their problems on racism has gotten harder when at the same time tens of millions non-whites have immigrated to the United States and in that time, despite not being white, have outperformed black America, and many have even outperformed white America. This substantially weakens the old racial arguments.

That's why it's shifted away from personal, direct individual racism to institutional racism. 50 years ago the racial argument was based on too many individual racists, teachers, employers, politicians, neighbors, being racist, and that to fight racism you had to combat the racists populating the institutions through educating them, and welcoming blacks into the institutions. But flash forward 50 years of Affirmative Action and a white population that is incredibly more tolerant and race blind, and (which is often ignored these days) a flourishing black middle class and many more blacks in leadership position, so many of the problems facing particularly poorer blacks remain. Blacks continue to commit disproportionate amounts of crime and urban deprived neighborhoods remain disproportionately black.

Now the blame for the problems is shifting, not to any individual responsibility, but to a focus on "institutional racism," calling for racism within the framework of American society and American institutions rather than the individuals, and by making it institutional, the proponents override all the current racial tolerance and diversity and affirmative action programs to reach back to the past as an excuse for today's behavior. That's why if Hispanic gang members shoot each other, it's not racism, but when black gang members shoot each other, it's racism. That's why poor white people in places of generational poverty, such as rural America and Appalachia, are not absolved of their poverty, and even openly mocked and trashed, but poor blacks in inner cities are absolved of any responsibilities for their poverty and it's racist to make fun of their cultural behaviors.

I do see and understand why. A focus on blaming "institutional" racism of the past to present allows people to avoid looking at other things more close to home and provides an easy scrapegoat for angers and frustrations.

But ultimately, I suspect it won't go much beyond severely worsening many things. And, ironically, it is still going to the white man with a begging bowl.

No quotes needed for the institutional in institutional racism. It is in fact very real. The US racial caste system puts Black descendants of slavery and Native Americans at the lowest ranks below non-white immigrants. The failure of people like you to acknowledge it, allows it to continue. There are also systems that keep people impoverished which often overlap with race, but that doesn't change the fact that the biggest predictor of how much lifetime wealth you will accumulate is race. A white high school dropout earns more than a black college grad because institutions protect white mediocrity by deferring black opportunity.

How does it put them below if they have the following that immigrants don't have:

- they speak fluent English (most of the immigrants come here either without speaking any English or with a very poor English)
- they was offered free English grammar education for 12 years (all the immigrants can hope is free ESL classes in a local library at the large urban areas)
- they have family support (sometimes extensive family with grandparents, siblings, aunts and anckles)
- they have legal status to work
- they have Affirmative Action to go to college
- they can join military (for some immigrants this is not an option)
- if they are poor, they are eligible for financial aid in college (immigrants don't )
- they can drive (a lot of immigrants moving from big cities or rural areas never drove)

All the listed above put blacks way above any white or non-white immigrant at the starting point.

I think if you are going to argue this stuff, you need to do your research first. You’ve obviously thought about this a lot and formed your own opinion but it’s also obvious that you have not done any substantive reading about racism. Start with crystal Fleming.

I suspect it's more like you've decided what your narrative is and you automatically disagree with anyone else who has different views or who questions it. Have you done any substantive reading yourself?

[Anonymous]

Amazing how people don't want to give $50K to poor people because they're afraid they'll act irresponsibly, but have no problem giving billion dollar bailouts to corporations who have a proven track record of behaving irresponsibly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it race-neutral if we know which people tend to have children they can't afford to raise?

The Mormons?

Irish Catholics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it race-neutral if we know which people tend to have children they can't afford to raise?

The Mormons?

Irish Catholics?

The Duggars?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amazing how people don't want to give $50K to poor people because they're afraid they'll act irresponsibly, but have no problem giving billion dollar bailouts to corporations who have a proven track record of behaving irresponsibly.

Bingo.