I see that the California state senate has set up a task force to consider reparations for African-Americans. I’m not sure where they expect to find the money for this in a state already running a deficit this year of just under $55 billion, and with unfunded long-term obligations exceeding $1.5 trillion, but I guess it fits with the California “woke” ethic, the same “woke” ethic that has produced statewide power blackouts and masses of homeless people living on the streets in Los Angeles and San Francisco and drove the state to undertake a doomed and now-discontinued $100 billion “supposedly green” high-speed rail project that was economically unsustainable.
But aside from that, I have never understood the logic of this reparation idea. Reparations to the people actually exploited makes sense. If we were paying reparations to the former slaves themselves I would understand it, and even agree with it. They were the ones who were actually exploited. But paying reparations to their descendants several generations removed? That doesn’t make sense to me, though I certainly understand why the idea appeals to them. Everyone likes to have the government give them money.
But then why just the African-American descendants of slaves? Why not also the descendants of American Indians whose land we appropriated? Why not the descendants of West Coast Japanese who were interned during world war II? Why not the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants who were discriminated against in the last century? Why not the descendants of all American women, who were locked out of the labor market for so long? Why not the descendants of all the Jews who were systematically discriminated against? Where does this end?
Like the idea of “giving back the land” to the local native American tribes (who would, by the same logic, have to then give it back to the tribes they took it from, etc, etc, etc), there is no way to repair the past. It is what it is.
We should instead attend to the current injustices. Money spent to more closely achieve the goal of “equality of opportunity” (NOT equality of outcome) would be better spent. Things like early childhood programs to give poor kids a better start make sense. Money spent improving our K-12 education for everyone (not just the elite) makes sense. Effective job training programs for the unemployed (or at least those willing to participate) make sense. Clearly better training, and perhaps more rigorous selection, of police would be worth investing in.
But reparations? That simply doesn’t make sense to me. That is just the liberal elite assuaging their guilt and virtue signaling. And if the wealthy want to spend their own money that way, they have plenty of it and that’s their privilege, but of course that isn’t what would happen. Most of the burden would fall on the rest of us taxpayers.
No wonder the wealthy are leaving California in droves these days.
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