Reply to It's (finally) time for reparations. It's time for the US to pay its debt.

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Reply to "It's (finally) time for reparations. It's time for the US to pay its debt. "

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[quote=Anonymous]The debt is unpayable and those who incurred that debt are dead. Most whites haven't accrued wealth either. It's undeniable that racism has significantly impeded the ability to accrue wealth, but there are a lot of other reasons besides racism that result in people not accruing wealth as well.

The column articulates injustices very well but despite describing the "technical details" as the easy part buries the actual action at the very end and then glosses over it. "Who should pay how much to whom?" is the critical question.

"Congress" should pay an undetermined sum for an undetermined period of time "to any person who has documentation that he or she identified as a black person for at least 10 years before the beginning of any reparations process and can trace at least one ancestor back to American slavery."

"Congress," of course, does not have any money it doesn't get from taxpayers. A tax on, say, poor whites to increase the wealth of, say, middle class blacks, doesn't seem like a great solution.

An estate tax for 50 years on estates over $50 million payable to African Americans who can trace an ancestor back to American Slavery and with income of less than $30,000 per year would deserve serious consideration.

Maybe other approaches would as well. But the litany of accurate grievances without a concrete statement about who pays what to whom just sounds like a request for a blank check that won't be regarded as sufficient whatever it might be. [/quote]

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