US Elections 2020

[Stavros]

not sure I'm following your logic here....if you could identify the families that profited from slavery and have them pay back wages, adjusting for inflation, to the families of the slaves they owned, why would this be a stupid and damaging idea? lol How could it be any more damaging than the act of slavery itself? And how could buying a house, if you don't own one already be dismissed as nonsense?

a) if this is an election issue for the Demcrats, it is an issue that will lose them votes.

b) from a practical point of view, you not only need to name and shame slave owners, but name their slaves, so their descendants get the money.

c) suppose the descendants of slave owners denounce slavery, claiming they have no liability for something they oppose? And suppose the descendant of a slave owner has married a Black woman descended from slaves? In practical terms it is either hard, or undesirable to follow through a policy on the basis of a register should one be compiled, and how many court cases will result from descendants of slaves who are not, but just see an opportunity to make some money? And so on. It is a legal minefield, do you want to step onto it?

d) The only reasonable way to approach this is to admit that slavery was an important part of the economy of British America and the United States, and that the wealth created which was spent in various forms in the US, can thus be computed into the contemporary wealth of the US from which reparations would be drawn, so that the logical move is to create a more equitable dsitribution of wealth for all, bearing in mind that White people were denied the opportunity to work on the plantations because Slave labour was cheaper. Re-distriibute wealth through a reform of the tax system and public services, create or amend existing education and employment so that Black people have an equal opportunity to learn and work, and you go some way to repairing the damage caused by Slavery.

e) but will this solve the problem of 'Race' in America? I doubt it. Stop fussing about a past you cannot change, and fuss about a future you can.

[decastro]

a) if this is an election issue for the Demcrats, it is an issue that will lose them votes.

b) from a practical point of view, you not only need to name and shame slave owners, but name their slaves, so their descendants get the money.

c) suppose the descendants of slave owners denounce slavery, claiming they have no liability for something they oppose? And suppose the descendant of a slave owner has married a Black woman descended from slaves? In practical terms it is either hard, or undesirable to follow through a policy on the basis of a register should one be compiled, and how many court cases will result from descendants of slaves who are not, but just see an opportunity to make some money? And so on. It is a legal minefield, do you want to step onto it?

d) The only reasonable way to approach this is to admit that slavery was an important part of the economy of British America and the United States, and that the wealth created which was spent in various forms in the US, can thus be computed into the contemporary wealth of the US from which reparations would be drawn, so that the logical move is to create a more equitable dsitribution of wealth for all, bearing in mind that White people were denied the opportunity to work on the plantations because Slave labour was cheaper. Re-distriibute wealth through a reform of the tax system and public services, create or amend existing education and employment so that Black people have an equal opportunity to learn and work, and you go some way to repairing the damage caused by Slavery.

e) but will this solve the problem of 'Race' in America? I doubt it. Stop fussing about a past you cannot change, and fuss about a future you can.

my POV is this, its 2020, we can carbon date rocks from thousands of years ago, you can go to ancestry.com and find out if you're related to Lincoln, I dont think it would be impossible to do some forensic accounting, track down slave owners and yes also their slaves, I thought that was implied.

I think you're looking at it from a socio/political point of view when my only angle on it is an economic one, i.e. I work you pay. If a family has benefitted from slavery, if they have money that old, they can afford to pay the descendants of the families that worked for them. its really simple. the rest of us should not be taxed and not every african american would get paid. i do not think it would solve racism, but thats not the point. you got free labor, generations of your family benefited from the profits while simultaneously entire generations of Black families had to start from scratch because their entire working lives amounted to nothing. The reasons that youre giving for not doing it are kind of silly in comparison. I mean, if someone told me i wouldnt be getting my paycheck because of "political reasons" or because it wouldnt solve "racism in america" I'd say fuck you pay me. ive heard the "redistribution of wealth thru other means" argument and yea thats like telling someone you'll pay them back in chuck e cheese tokens. no thanks, I want money like every body else has. again, fuck you, pay me. Ironically these concerns of yours are all the same reasons given for delaying abolition. "they wouldnt know what to do with the freedom" or "wasnt the right time" or "oh what about the economic consequences?" etc etc. Sometimes you have to do the right thing first then worry about the consequences after. Lincoln understood this.

finally, we are a group of sentient creatures on a floating orb in outer space, what one person chooses to fuss over is really not up to you to decide. an argument could be made that all actions are futile in the grand scheme of things so who are you to say what one person should be worrying over? In any case, i'm not fussing, my family members were not slaves, I wouldnt see any money from this. i'm also very well aware that reparations will never happen and it doesnt bother or surprise me, we dont live in a just country, a 5 year old could tell you that. But I do not see the past and future as separate entities. In fact, the very concept of laws and justice are to do just that, make right the past to protect the future. Would you tell a rape victim to stop fussing about the past? Man the crazy thing is we are a country full of people that sues each other successfully every day for minor minor infractions. And yet you've got people telling Blacks to just walk it off.

[broncofan]

Man the crazy thing is we are a country full of people that sues each other successfully every day for minor minor infractions. And yet you've got people telling Blacks to just walk it off.

I don't have fully formed opinions on reparations because I support the idea but am not sure what the implementation would look like. You are right that people sue each other for all types of wrongs but typically those suits are filed by the person directly aggrieved against the person who caused them physical, economic, or emotional harm. Occasionally suits are filed by survivors for the pain and suffering of someone who died on behalf of that person's estate or by survivors for their own emotional loss when their loved one is killed by someone else's negligence or malice.

As a lawsuit filed under existing statutory or common law it would not work. As an act of legislation by Congress intended to compensate descendants of slaves for the persecution of their ancestors it might. I think we can provide reparations or stipends for the descendants of Black people who suffered under this system, but I also don't know whether we should go back to interrogate the source of people's inheritance. Money is inherited, guilt isn't and while I actually think estates should be taxed at a much higher rate in this country, I don't think we should have actions that strip vested wealth based on the actions of one's ancestors. Just my view.

[broncofan]

Just to clarify my meaning: I would support reparations for the descendants of slaves as a moral rather than legal imperative. It would be a way to acknowledge wrongs committed against Black people, for the inability of slaves after slavery's abolition to seek legal redress for themselves and their immediate descendants, and for the many broken promises by this country after slavery was abolished. I don't think it makes sense under existing tort law or should be a litigated issue.

I agree with Stavros that it would not be a popular position for the Democratic party to take. Even if implemented in a thoughtful and rational way, it would neither erase the historic effects of racism nor prevent their continuation, but I'm sure there are proposals I would support anyway.

[filghy2]

Rather than reparations, why not focus on policies that would improve the lot of black people and address the causes of their disadvantage? I think history is way too messy to be toting up how much different people gained or lost from past injustices. The best way to atone for past sins is to acknowledge them and build a better and fairer society for the future.

This would be consistent with the approach taken after WWII. Rather than sending sending Germany and Japan a bill, the victorious Western democracies focussed on trying to build a world in which all countries could pursue prosperity peacefully to try to ensure that the conditions that led to militaristic nationalism did not reemerge. Obviously it wasn't done perfectly, but the outcomes were pretty good in historical terms.

[decastro]

i'm not even really dwelling on the moral side of this, I just believe its really simple, if you owe somebody, pay them. theres nothing more american than that, we've always been capitalists. not being sure about what the implementation would look like is never a good reason to not do something. if the father is dead, pay the son. and so on and so forth. my thoughts on this are exceedingly simple. maybe i'm being naive but there has to be a reasonable way to do this, something that accommodates both families, whether it be paid installments or a cap on how much you have to pay back based on your current net worth. Money is amoral, i'm not talking about uprooting a familys way of life to punish them, I don't think anybody wants that. But if the families of those who owned slaves aren't paying the bulk of reparations, then whose gonna pay it? Your average white citizen? lol yea right. there isn't a direct precedent for this, but analyzing what america did with native americans could provide some insight. Honestly if i were white and I knew my family benefited from slavery I would take the initiative myself and make it right. My thoughts on this issue are also informed by everyday american life. e.g. I've worked hard to get my credit score to a good place but i still get calls from debt collectors about shit that they forgot i paid already. A friends father passed away and he still gets mails in his fathers name about old credit card balances. My point is, money doesn't die, debt doesn't die, we are reminded of this every second of every day, and with technology being what it is, everything is quantified, records don't get washed away. now more than ever it wouldn't be difficult to apply the same vigor to collecting old debt from slavery as they do to collecting debt from student loans.

I'll end with this, both you and Stavros have alluded to a kind of futility in reparations ability to erase racism in america. I can't speak for all blacks, i'm not al sharpton, but I can tell you that nobody I know thinks fixing racism in this country is even a remote possibility anymore. We haven't for a long time, even the most optimistic Black people I know. At this point, we just don't want our kids to get shot in the street like dogs, or run down by white supremacists trying to make a point, or shot in the back by police officers. Lol the standards are pretty low. I should honestly just be happy that neither of you are denying that slavery happened. For a while now, I've thought that Malcolm X's idea of giving a state or states to blacks was probably the right way to go, as sad as it is to say. In any case, The MLK dream has been dead for a while now and nobody I know even cares that much, its just watching unarmed people get killed by people who are supposed to be protecting them thats getting old. Getting killed over traffic violations. But i'll digress. At the end of the day, Reparations is really just about people getting what they're owed, its the principle of the thing. Like how The Dude just wanted his fucking carpet back. And I would support it, no matter the circumstance, if the roles were reversed, if blacks owed whites in some alternate reality, if humans owed aliens(in the future) if mice rose up and demanded damages for all the experiments we did on their relatives, I would support reparations for mice. If you provide a service for someone, you should get paid for it, from now until the end of recorded civilization, time shouldn't be a factor as long as time exists because Money does not die.
P.S. Ive gotta thank you Stavros, I burst out laughing when you wrote "White people were denied the opportunity to work on the plantations". I hope you let me quote you on that, I've never heard it put quite that way before.

[broncofan]

Lol the standards are pretty low. I should honestly just be happy that neither of you are denying that slavery happened.

You're right the standards are low. You wrote two giant block paragraphs without a single useful or logical point in them and then insinuate I'm racist for supporting reparations for moral rather than legal reasons. It's hard for me to believe you could write that second sentence without feeling like an unusually dishonest person.

You say stuff like it really is this simple and then proceed to give examples that show why it actually isn't simple. The reason you're contacted by creditors is because it's your debt. When money passes through an estate and then branches in a half dozen directions, then is converted into a bunch of other assets, it becomes difficult to trace. In fact, it can become impossible to trace given the fact that money is fungible.

I also didn't say that not knowing how it should be implemented is a reason not to do it. It's a reason to think about its implementation because you'd have decisions to make instead of simply declaring that it's simple. I also didn't say the fact that it would not end racism is a reason not to do it. I proceeded to say I would support some forms of it nonetheless.

After reading your last two posts I can't think of a worse advocate for reparations than you. Beyond that, I'll be happy to discuss the Democratic convention or any other subject.

[MrFanti]

Reparations, one of the most stupid and damaging ideas in human history- punishment, guilt, call it what you will.

Welcome to the crazy world of the New Democrats in the USA.
We're at a point now where Bill Clinton could be considered as "moderate Republican" when compared to today's far Left Democrats.....

And guess what, the Reparation Movement is growing:
So again, I have to wonder at what point will White Democrats who back "BLM" get pissed when they have that annual "Reparation Tax" on the income tax withheld?

Duke prof proposes $12 trillion in reparations....$800k per eligible Black household
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15473

[decastro]

You're right the standards are low. You wrote two giant block paragraphs without a single useful or logical point in them and then insinuate I'm racist for supporting reparations for moral rather than legal reasons. It's hard for me to believe you could write that second sentence without feeling like an unusually dishonest person.

i didn't insinuate that you're racist, I just meant to separate morality or guilt from my thoughts on this. I actually found your posts to be fair and honest. And I appreciate the mind behind them. I'm having a hard time seeing in my post where you got that from. Money is amoral is really my point, which is what makes it simple. if I didn't pay back my loans, the government would come after my kids. and then my grandkids and my great grandkids. They're not doing it with the intent to punish my kids, they're doing it because thats what they do; its a machine. If you can't grasp the thread I'm pulling at there, then I don't know what else to say. If you state you're doing it as a moral imperative, I can appreciate that, but you will have detractors who open up pandoras box. Who hasn't been wronged in the past on some level? But if you keep it focused simply on, lets have estates pay back what they owe, then it doesn't need to get so messy. An estate is not a person. You both bring up solid points, and regretfully I can't give you explicit answers, I am not, as you say, an advocate for reparations. I don't waste my time on lost causes. But I don't think that doing some forensic accounting would be as difficult as you all are making it out to be. In fact i know it wouldn't be. The second sentence was a joke or referendum on where we are at in political discourse. But you sound upset; you are taking my examples maybe a bit too literally. I'm not a dishonest person. At least, not unusually. You are both right, the legal side of this is murky. But again, I don't think its an insurmountable problem. Men created laws, we are not chained to them, we can make changes if we need to.

[broncofan]

Thanks. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Apologies.