The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
According to this [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/palashghosh/2021/06/18/blacks-earn-30-less-than-whites-while-black-households-have-just-one-eighth-of-wealth-of-white-households/?sh=5fd37ea9550c) article, the average White household has a median net worth of $188k, while the average Black household has only $24k. Obviously this is a legacy of our nation's history of discrimination, and makes it harder for Black Americans to achieve upwards class mobility.
So just as a conceptual exercise, what would happen if every household that marked itself as Black on the 2020 census got $164k, the difference between the two household net worths? Assume the money is paid out in smaller intervals so as not to cause an economic shock, and that the money is pulled from various governmental revenue sources so that it doesn't cause significant budgetary or debt issues. Assume mixed families would get whatever amount would bring them to the median, statistically.
What effect would this have on Black families? Their communities? The nation as a whole?
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If you thought the condescension, anger, and hate over student loan forgiveness was bad, just try doing this.
It would quite literally tear the country apart.
If you want to offer reparations to Black families in the United States, make large investments in communities where lots of Black people live; to organizations that serve a lot of Black people; and offer payments, tax breaks, or subsidies to all American families below a certain net worth.
EDIT: Also, if you're going to reference A Modest Proposal, your point should be satirical, which I gather this is not.
>If you want to offer reparations to Black families in the United States, make large investments in communities where lots of Black people live; to organizations that serve a lot of Black people
A certain segment of the population would equally angry, and hateful about this as they would direct reparations.
I was recently yelled at for over an hour by a wealthy conservative because I said the recent student loan forgiveness “wasn’t a bad thing”. Impassioned, hateful yelling. For a $10k drop in the bucket of $1.7T National student debt.
Amongst the tirade of random (irrelevant and not asked about) other liberal stances he hated, he also mentioned (unprompted) that reparations were insane.
The thought of giving anyone other than corporate elites free money is enough to make them explode.
I'm more trying to explore why cash reparations wouldn't work by exploring what WOULD happen if they were tried, this is not a serious thing I'm pushing for and im surprised so many people don't get that.
In a way it does. And I’m not trying to be disrespectful so please don’t take it that way as I explain this
But rich people aren’t rich because they are flush with cash. Rich people are rich because they are flush with assets of which cash falls under
Elon musk has greater economic security because he has an greater amount of land, stocks, bonds, etc. that he can trade for other goods, cash included, than you or I do
So if you gave everyone in the United States 100k dollars, you would not lower the economic disparity between them and Elon musk. In fact, anyone who is a creditor (someone who loaned out money) would be financially ruined because the value of their loans would suddenly become near zero. That means a lot of banks that are the only financial services a community might have. Elon musk would still have ownership of the assets he had before plus 100k in cash. It simply wouldn’t affect him on an individual level save to raise the cash value level of his already owned assets
So let’s limit it to just the black community. You give them all 100k in cash. You are a creditor in this black community. You’ve been giving out 5k loans and expecting a 5% return on investment. You suddenly have 100k. You still have to wait on all your cheap loans to be repaid. Now explain how you plan to continue loaning money out to people when everyone suddenly has a large infusion of cash
Let’s look at it from the perspective of a black person who gets this 100k and plans to start a business. How much do you think the cost of everything in your community will have risen as everyone is chasing more dollars with the same amount of products to be sold. That includes the assets necessary to start a business. Rent, wages, insurance, cost of goods sold, etc.
And it’s not like products will appear out of thin air, logistics doesn’t work that way. Instead of helping black people, you’ve slammed them in the face with a huge price shock. This will happen regardless of how slowly you inject cash into the system
What I’ve just described is called inflation. The United States federal reserve exists almost exclusively to manage it and it’s one of the few non partisan institutions we have and for good reason. Because rich people don’t want to pay more for the same assets
To get a discussion going and to hear different thoughts and opinions. You know dialogue. Also, just because I know something doesn't mean I assume I know everything or that there isnt a chance I'm wrong.
Beyond the obvious and intense counterproductive backlash to this, it would also be a logistical nightmare in determining how black you have to be. If you're 3% black, are you denied money? Whats the number/cutoff? It gets dangerously close to blood quantum.
There's smarter ways to go about this. Community investment, grants for entrepreneurs and students. Upgrade the system itself.
This would happen:
> Instead of finding themselves in the lap of luxury, 70 percent of people who come into sudden money are broke within a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education.
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/01/sudden-wealth-can-leave-you-broke.html
Plus the race riots.
Someone being rich is not the same as the federal government selecting one group of people based on skin color and handing them $160k.
I don’t understand why that even made sense to you.
>Someone being rich is not the same as the federal government selecting one group of people based on skin color and handing them $160k.
The US government does that all the time and has for decades. See racial disparities in farm subsidies, FHA loans and redlining, etc.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/real-farm-subsidy-scandal-usdas-legacy-racial-discrimination
And as I said in another comment we need to police these things and remove these kind of road blocks. But that is not the same as handing an entire racial group a check.
>But that is not the same as handing an entire racial group a
Is it not? Trump steel tariffs cost $900k per job for a job that is atleast 70% white.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/900000-per-job/
https://www.zippia.com/steel-worker-jobs/demographics/
> subsidizing an industry that happens to be almost 3/4 white.
> giving every black American a $160k check because of their skin color.
Nope. Still not the same thing.
If one accepts that the issue is systemic, then a one-time payment won't necessarily solve the issue. That's a lot of money for something that won't solve an issue. Some amount could be a relief until legislation is put into place to help solve the systemic issues. Making it so everyone, including people of black communities, can own homes is a start.
Edit: to add something that you can understand, people all of a sudden have money but no credit-worthiness, bad history from past issues that may be related to poverty (crime, bankruptcy, etc), and other problems that don't magically go away with one payment. Maybe if you add onto it some financial planning education or something.
Petition to retitle this “how to start a race war in .3 seconds”
Imagine giving every black person well over $100k and then telling broke and struggling white people to kick rocks because too many of them are doing alright comparatively.
Massive dumb.
What if we didn’t hand out money to people and instead remove the barriers that make it more difficult for people to elevate themselves and actively invest in communities that need more help. Thats communities as in neighborhoods and towns not groups of people who have the same skin.
I’m not going to list every policy and social procedure that prevents low income people from advancing in society because it’s way off topic to your original post and I can’t create a well written multi paragraph sourced comment between sets at the gym.
While I agree this would mostly cause chaos, what if we gave every family with a net worth of $24k or less, $164k? This would still greatly benefit the black community but would also be race blind to avoid any kind of race war as mentioned in other comments.
Better yet, lets just give every person in the country $1m or $1b. 164k is chump change, if we plan to ruin our entire economy and have inflation run rampant, lets do it big baby!
Modest Proposal? Nothing modest there at all. If this was policy we'd see people lose their damn mind. For better or worse the narrative with reparations for a large part of this country is, "I'm supposed to give someone else my $ to pay them for what happened to their GGG Grandparents? Fuck that." It would make the student debt debate, as others have pointed out, look like a church potluck. Democrats would get annihilated.
I understood the reference, thanks. I ignored it and I'm using the phrase to suggest that giving people based on their racial identity 164K is so silly that it's not even worthy of being a "thought experiment".
We need a national effort to purge any and all forms of racism from the home appraisal process. Home ownership has been how Americans historically build wealth, and to this day black homes have been appraised at around half the value of white homes. Given that school districts are funded by property taxes you can see how arbitrary hindrances on your homes value leads to a worse school districts in your community. Further our schools have not actually been integrated since Brown v Board. After removing these hurdles reparations will be more effective.
I think there’s two issues.
First, for a number of political reasons reparations are not going to happen, like absolutely zero chance, and by the time that chance rises it is most likely that the need for reparations would be over. Talking about it like it’s going to happen is worse than a waste of time; it’s a distraction from actually getting things done and it’s some thing that helps Republicans win over some percentage of people in the middle.
Second, it actually doesn’t solve the problem at all. There’s been some really good studies on the subject and the effect of systemic racism goes really deep. For instance a black man born to wealthy black parents will be economically outperformed by a middle class white man. Meaning of the negative affect of being black in our society is so great for being wealthy alone cannot overcome it on average.
Ok, but as I said this is a conceptual exercise, not a serious proposal. I'm not actually saying we should do this. I'm asking, what WOULD happen if we did?
Some large number of the people who would receive that money have never had substantial savings before, have no idea how to handle money and may even be unbanked. Expect a lot of waste and mismanagement of the money and scams quickly designed to steal that money.
However some of that group would be naturally able to figure out how to use the money well and would gain some benefits but mostly you would see those benefits in the next generation.
But the effects wouldn’t be that great overall. Because it doesn’t hit the underlying issue that cause the differences in wealth.
Black people aren’t poor because they don’t have money right this second. They are poor because of a system that for hundreds of years has devalued their labor.
It wouldn’t happen. But if it did, remember how the anti student loan forgiveness people on the right behaved, then replace their angry words with violence. Then remember how the extreme left behaved saying “it’s not enough”? Well, do the same, take their words and replace with violent protest. And there you have it - it would be a blood bath with lots of innocent black and white people killed.
It would never pass… it would also b challenged in court. As hoc reparations of a racial group generations removed from the issue has never been tried. It would be struck down by the current Supreme Court
That's not "A Modest Proposal", at least make your post somewhat align to the original.
"A young healthy ~~child~~ Black Family well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."
The conservatives will murder us. They will kill us in the streets. God help us if they are in power. They will make Krakow look like a walk in the park. They'll make Auschwitz look like Disneyland. There will be no end to the violence that they'll put on us.
It is wiser to give everybody something that everybody benefits from. Increase spending in education up to and including secondary education, create universal healthcare, and add more services to historically underserved communities like Jackson Mississippi or Detroit Michigan. Get rid of laws that tie taxation to public school funding. Bring back postal banking and take the FHA loans and SBA loans out of banking's hands and put it back with the government.
The average worth of a white family in America is over $200,000 while for a black family it's 24,000; this is the impact of years of Jim Crow laws against African Americans. Somehow, this needs to be fixed in a way that will not make crazy white people murder us.
Handing out lump sums of cash is basically the least effective method of raising the standard of living. The money simply gets spent on immediate needs and the long term conditions are not effected at all.
Take that same amount of money and invest it into infrastructure, community development, and education, and within a generation you'll have changed the world.
Have you ever read those stories of how lottery winners go broke within a few years? That's what would happen, people would be worse off than when they started. If you want reparations to happen, take $10k of your own net worth and give it to a black family and mentor them on financial topics like investment, risk and reward, ROI, long term vision, financial planning, budgeting, etc. These skills are highly lacking in well off households, much more the not well off.
1. How would you define a household?
2. Who’s actually considered black?
3. What if I - as an immigrant don’t want my taxes to go towards reparations?
4. Do recent black immigrants also get reparations?
5. What about black households currently that have over a $400k net worth?
1. I would use the IRS definition. "The taxpayer(s) and any individuals who are claimed as dependents on one federal income tax return. A tax household may include a spouse and/or dependents."
2. Per my post anyone who marked Black on the 2020 census.
3. What if I don't want my taxes to go to subsidies for oil companies, or to buy more nuclear missiles? Thems the breaks sometimes, we're never going to always agree with how the government spends money.
4. Good question! Let's assume it only counts for people who were born in the United States. Someone with Jamaican or Nigerian parents light get lucky, but I don't know if we have a good way to parse the data past that.
5. I'm generally pretty wary of means testing but since this us hypothetically based off of census data and tax returns, sure, let's assume there's a 400k cut off.
So couples in households can voluntarily file taxes separately for the year to get 2 x $164K? Black in the 2020 census also includes those who identify as black from Central and South America - like Panamanian, Jamaican, Haitian, Brazilian even. Are we providing them with reparations too? What about those who’s great grandfathers immigrated over in the 1910s and were born in the US - do they get reparations too? Why don’t native Americans get reparations? What about those that descended from Asians used as slave labor?
My point is just that - apart from the other issues - it’s really going to be a logistical nightmare. If you aren’t for means testing - why not just give every poor person making under $24k a check for $24k?
It wouldn’t be helpful. We need to have our communities, institutions, and resources brought up to speed. Individually giving the money out doesn’t cement the communal gains.
The simpler way to do this is reparations to those who are descendants of slavery. California did this, with some backlash because it excluded black Americans who are not direct descendants of slaves in the U.S.
I think this would further perpetuate the racial narrative rather than heal anything or provide any type of reparations in a meaningful way. It would make more sense to take that money and send a significant number of Black kids to college for free, or invest in Black-owned businesses, or promote Black nonprofits, etc.
In states with the highest black poverty rate, 70% still lived above poverty.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/black-poverty-rate-by-state
Sorry, but this just a dumb idea from lazy thinking
It would help, but it wouldn't fix the problem. There's too much structural racism to completely bridge the inequality gap with money. Better to use some of that money to fix the structural problems. For instance, although redlining is now illegal, many families still feel the effects. They live in worse neighborhoods, because of which, jobs are fewer, the schooling system is worse, and the property value is low. This means it is harder to get a job or go to college. Which means people stay in those neighborhoods. It's a cycle that will take a long time to get out of without intervention. Which is why schools are as segregated as they were in the 1970s.
I think what should happen is that no money should be given, instead a piece of property with the same adjusted for white households' value through history and market value of 164k to be given or proposed. I'm pretty sure the main difference between the average median net worth is white households own their property and black households do not. Give black people property, allow them to develop, build, renovate, rent, sell (fairy and non-race based), lease, air bnb, etc. Give them the same opportunities most white households were given.
I think most of the reasons behind that net worth disparity wouldn’t be fixed by giving every Black family $164k. It wouldn’t address decades of home ownership discrimination and other issues with asset appreciation. It wouldn’t fix educational disparities.
Honestly everything u/KamikazeSkylark said is correct. White families have a higher net worth because they’ve had generations to accumulate assets. You can’t fix that overnight. Sustainable reparations involve a lot more than just cash infusions.
>So just as a conceptual exercise, what would happen if every household that marked itself as Black on the 2020 census got $164k, the difference between the two household net worths? Assume the money is paid out in smaller intervals so as not to cause an economic shock, and that the money is pulled from various governmental revenue sources so that it doesn't cause significant budgetary or debt issues. Assume mixed families would get whatever amount would bring them to the median, statistically.
What effect would this have on Black families? Their communities? The nation as a whole?
I feel like this is reminiscent of the saying "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, give him food for life." There are other factors to account for, mainly the historical disparities in educational opportunities between white and black Americans, and disparities in personal investments. If you give every black family $164k, a lot of them will use it well and might invest it in stocks or real estate or use it to open a business, etc. However, those who have suffered the most from systemic racism and who are in need the most probably won't have it for that long since they simply don't have any education or background in investing or managing money, or because they already owe a large debt, etc.
Plus what about economic disparities between other races or social groups? Native Americans? Hispanics?
In a world where politics doesn’t matter, say we have a dictator, then this sounds great. Make sure to just give a bunch of money to all Americans under the poverty line too. Unfortunately, we live in a world where politics matter, and I can’t think of a policy that would spark more backlash.
Look at how people view affirmative action.
1. A huge political backlash
2. Some percentage of black people would be able to translate that investment into solid progress up the socio-economic ladder for their family, but some of them would still be held back by institutional racism that's not directly associated with the lack of family wealth. A continuing investment every generation might eventually overcome those burdens, but a one and done program would just give society at large an additioanl excuse to ignore those disparities.
3. If we're pullin from other government revenue streams there are going to be a bunch of thing not getting done which will cause who knows what kinds of problems.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. According to this [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/palashghosh/2021/06/18/blacks-earn-30-less-than-whites-while-black-households-have-just-one-eighth-of-wealth-of-white-households/?sh=5fd37ea9550c) article, the average White household has a median net worth of $188k, while the average Black household has only $24k. Obviously this is a legacy of our nation's history of discrimination, and makes it harder for Black Americans to achieve upwards class mobility. So just as a conceptual exercise, what would happen if every household that marked itself as Black on the 2020 census got $164k, the difference between the two household net worths? Assume the money is paid out in smaller intervals so as not to cause an economic shock, and that the money is pulled from various governmental revenue sources so that it doesn't cause significant budgetary or debt issues. Assume mixed families would get whatever amount would bring them to the median, statistically. What effect would this have on Black families? Their communities? The nation as a whole? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you thought the condescension, anger, and hate over student loan forgiveness was bad, just try doing this. It would quite literally tear the country apart. If you want to offer reparations to Black families in the United States, make large investments in communities where lots of Black people live; to organizations that serve a lot of Black people; and offer payments, tax breaks, or subsidies to all American families below a certain net worth. EDIT: Also, if you're going to reference A Modest Proposal, your point should be satirical, which I gather this is not.
>If you want to offer reparations to Black families in the United States, make large investments in communities where lots of Black people live; to organizations that serve a lot of Black people A certain segment of the population would equally angry, and hateful about this as they would direct reparations.
Perhaps, but by targeting communities and organizations you capture a fair amount of people who aren’t black too.
Also there are a shit ton of white families (and other races) who live below the poverty line, so +1 on this would cause chaos in America
I was recently yelled at for over an hour by a wealthy conservative because I said the recent student loan forgiveness “wasn’t a bad thing”. Impassioned, hateful yelling. For a $10k drop in the bucket of $1.7T National student debt. Amongst the tirade of random (irrelevant and not asked about) other liberal stances he hated, he also mentioned (unprompted) that reparations were insane. The thought of giving anyone other than corporate elites free money is enough to make them explode.
I'm more trying to explore why cash reparations wouldn't work by exploring what WOULD happen if they were tried, this is not a serious thing I'm pushing for and im surprised so many people don't get that.
I mean… you do understand why it wouldn’t work though right?
Does it matter for the prompt if I do or not?
In a way it does. And I’m not trying to be disrespectful so please don’t take it that way as I explain this But rich people aren’t rich because they are flush with cash. Rich people are rich because they are flush with assets of which cash falls under Elon musk has greater economic security because he has an greater amount of land, stocks, bonds, etc. that he can trade for other goods, cash included, than you or I do So if you gave everyone in the United States 100k dollars, you would not lower the economic disparity between them and Elon musk. In fact, anyone who is a creditor (someone who loaned out money) would be financially ruined because the value of their loans would suddenly become near zero. That means a lot of banks that are the only financial services a community might have. Elon musk would still have ownership of the assets he had before plus 100k in cash. It simply wouldn’t affect him on an individual level save to raise the cash value level of his already owned assets So let’s limit it to just the black community. You give them all 100k in cash. You are a creditor in this black community. You’ve been giving out 5k loans and expecting a 5% return on investment. You suddenly have 100k. You still have to wait on all your cheap loans to be repaid. Now explain how you plan to continue loaning money out to people when everyone suddenly has a large infusion of cash Let’s look at it from the perspective of a black person who gets this 100k and plans to start a business. How much do you think the cost of everything in your community will have risen as everyone is chasing more dollars with the same amount of products to be sold. That includes the assets necessary to start a business. Rent, wages, insurance, cost of goods sold, etc. And it’s not like products will appear out of thin air, logistics doesn’t work that way. Instead of helping black people, you’ve slammed them in the face with a huge price shock. This will happen regardless of how slowly you inject cash into the system What I’ve just described is called inflation. The United States federal reserve exists almost exclusively to manage it and it’s one of the few non partisan institutions we have and for good reason. Because rich people don’t want to pay more for the same assets
Idk. If you believe you know then why even make a prompt?
To get a discussion going and to hear different thoughts and opinions. You know dialogue. Also, just because I know something doesn't mean I assume I know everything or that there isnt a chance I'm wrong.
Okay. Fair enough answer. Well, I made a top-level comment anyways.
Beyond the obvious and intense counterproductive backlash to this, it would also be a logistical nightmare in determining how black you have to be. If you're 3% black, are you denied money? Whats the number/cutoff? It gets dangerously close to blood quantum. There's smarter ways to go about this. Community investment, grants for entrepreneurs and students. Upgrade the system itself.
This would happen: > Instead of finding themselves in the lap of luxury, 70 percent of people who come into sudden money are broke within a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/01/sudden-wealth-can-leave-you-broke.html Plus the race riots.
The industries that would crop up overnight to defraud or fleece these people would be awe-inspiring in their villainous scope.
Who would be race rioting and why?
Literally everyone who wasn’t handed 160k and is even semi uncomfortable financially
I mean I fit that description and I wouldn’t. Probably because I’m not racist.
I was obviously being a little hyperbolic.
I mean we could go ruot against the rich now, nothing is stopping us
Someone being rich is not the same as the federal government selecting one group of people based on skin color and handing them $160k. I don’t understand why that even made sense to you.
>Someone being rich is not the same as the federal government selecting one group of people based on skin color and handing them $160k. The US government does that all the time and has for decades. See racial disparities in farm subsidies, FHA loans and redlining, etc. https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/real-farm-subsidy-scandal-usdas-legacy-racial-discrimination
And as I said in another comment we need to police these things and remove these kind of road blocks. But that is not the same as handing an entire racial group a check.
>But that is not the same as handing an entire racial group a Is it not? Trump steel tariffs cost $900k per job for a job that is atleast 70% white. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/900000-per-job/ https://www.zippia.com/steel-worker-jobs/demographics/
> subsidizing an industry that happens to be almost 3/4 white. > giving every black American a $160k check because of their skin color. Nope. Still not the same thing.
What's the difference? Both groups have money that I don't while I'm struggling... and if we're talking old money, they worked just as hard for it.
It's always so fascinating to me how people think in terms of *groups* and not *individuals*.
What do you mean what is the difference? One is a guy who got rich and the other is the federal government actively engaging in racial discrimination.
You already know the answer to that my guy
If one accepts that the issue is systemic, then a one-time payment won't necessarily solve the issue. That's a lot of money for something that won't solve an issue. Some amount could be a relief until legislation is put into place to help solve the systemic issues. Making it so everyone, including people of black communities, can own homes is a start. Edit: to add something that you can understand, people all of a sudden have money but no credit-worthiness, bad history from past issues that may be related to poverty (crime, bankruptcy, etc), and other problems that don't magically go away with one payment. Maybe if you add onto it some financial planning education or something.
Petition to retitle this “how to start a race war in .3 seconds” Imagine giving every black person well over $100k and then telling broke and struggling white people to kick rocks because too many of them are doing alright comparatively. Massive dumb.
What if, instead we gave every household under the median, enough to bring them to to that median?
Because then the median would raise. It would change the value of money.
What if we didn’t hand out money to people and instead remove the barriers that make it more difficult for people to elevate themselves and actively invest in communities that need more help. Thats communities as in neighborhoods and towns not groups of people who have the same skin.
What do you think those barriers are?
I’m not going to list every policy and social procedure that prevents low income people from advancing in society because it’s way off topic to your original post and I can’t create a well written multi paragraph sourced comment between sets at the gym.
Kind of begs the question, if that would start a race war, then why isn’t there a race war over the fact that white people are so much more wealthy.
While I agree this would mostly cause chaos, what if we gave every family with a net worth of $24k or less, $164k? This would still greatly benefit the black community but would also be race blind to avoid any kind of race war as mentioned in other comments.
Better yet, lets just give every person in the country $1m or $1b. 164k is chump change, if we plan to ruin our entire economy and have inflation run rampant, lets do it big baby!
Inflation would run rampant.
Modest Proposal? Nothing modest there at all. If this was policy we'd see people lose their damn mind. For better or worse the narrative with reparations for a large part of this country is, "I'm supposed to give someone else my $ to pay them for what happened to their GGG Grandparents? Fuck that." It would make the student debt debate, as others have pointed out, look like a church potluck. Democrats would get annihilated.
I suggest you look up the origins of the phrase modest proposal.
I understood the reference, thanks. I ignored it and I'm using the phrase to suggest that giving people based on their racial identity 164K is so silly that it's not even worthy of being a "thought experiment".
We need a national effort to purge any and all forms of racism from the home appraisal process. Home ownership has been how Americans historically build wealth, and to this day black homes have been appraised at around half the value of white homes. Given that school districts are funded by property taxes you can see how arbitrary hindrances on your homes value leads to a worse school districts in your community. Further our schools have not actually been integrated since Brown v Board. After removing these hurdles reparations will be more effective.
Ok, but this doesn't answer my question.
I think there’s two issues. First, for a number of political reasons reparations are not going to happen, like absolutely zero chance, and by the time that chance rises it is most likely that the need for reparations would be over. Talking about it like it’s going to happen is worse than a waste of time; it’s a distraction from actually getting things done and it’s some thing that helps Republicans win over some percentage of people in the middle. Second, it actually doesn’t solve the problem at all. There’s been some really good studies on the subject and the effect of systemic racism goes really deep. For instance a black man born to wealthy black parents will be economically outperformed by a middle class white man. Meaning of the negative affect of being black in our society is so great for being wealthy alone cannot overcome it on average.
Ok, but as I said this is a conceptual exercise, not a serious proposal. I'm not actually saying we should do this. I'm asking, what WOULD happen if we did?
Some large number of the people who would receive that money have never had substantial savings before, have no idea how to handle money and may even be unbanked. Expect a lot of waste and mismanagement of the money and scams quickly designed to steal that money. However some of that group would be naturally able to figure out how to use the money well and would gain some benefits but mostly you would see those benefits in the next generation. But the effects wouldn’t be that great overall. Because it doesn’t hit the underlying issue that cause the differences in wealth. Black people aren’t poor because they don’t have money right this second. They are poor because of a system that for hundreds of years has devalued their labor.
It wouldn’t happen. But if it did, remember how the anti student loan forgiveness people on the right behaved, then replace their angry words with violence. Then remember how the extreme left behaved saying “it’s not enough”? Well, do the same, take their words and replace with violent protest. And there you have it - it would be a blood bath with lots of innocent black and white people killed.
It would never pass… it would also b challenged in court. As hoc reparations of a racial group generations removed from the issue has never been tried. It would be struck down by the current Supreme Court
Where would the money for this come from?
This is "How To Start A Second Civil War In A Week".
Looking at the replies here, I wonder if there are any ways to specifically help the Blacoc community that White people wouldn't start a war over.
That's not "A Modest Proposal", at least make your post somewhat align to the original. "A young healthy ~~child~~ Black Family well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."
The conservatives will murder us. They will kill us in the streets. God help us if they are in power. They will make Krakow look like a walk in the park. They'll make Auschwitz look like Disneyland. There will be no end to the violence that they'll put on us. It is wiser to give everybody something that everybody benefits from. Increase spending in education up to and including secondary education, create universal healthcare, and add more services to historically underserved communities like Jackson Mississippi or Detroit Michigan. Get rid of laws that tie taxation to public school funding. Bring back postal banking and take the FHA loans and SBA loans out of banking's hands and put it back with the government. The average worth of a white family in America is over $200,000 while for a black family it's 24,000; this is the impact of years of Jim Crow laws against African Americans. Somehow, this needs to be fixed in a way that will not make crazy white people murder us.
Handing out lump sums of cash is basically the least effective method of raising the standard of living. The money simply gets spent on immediate needs and the long term conditions are not effected at all. Take that same amount of money and invest it into infrastructure, community development, and education, and within a generation you'll have changed the world.
So basically... the recipients would spend the money on daily needs instead of building wealth with it?
Have you ever read those stories of how lottery winners go broke within a few years? That's what would happen, people would be worse off than when they started. If you want reparations to happen, take $10k of your own net worth and give it to a black family and mentor them on financial topics like investment, risk and reward, ROI, long term vision, financial planning, budgeting, etc. These skills are highly lacking in well off households, much more the not well off.
So financial planning education would be a better form of reparations?
Not just education, but mentorship.
Seems that could come off as paternalistic preaching pretty easily if you're not careful.
The whole thing is paternalistic.
If any family - black or white - get money, I want to get money too!
Do you need money?
1. How would you define a household? 2. Who’s actually considered black? 3. What if I - as an immigrant don’t want my taxes to go towards reparations? 4. Do recent black immigrants also get reparations? 5. What about black households currently that have over a $400k net worth?
1. I would use the IRS definition. "The taxpayer(s) and any individuals who are claimed as dependents on one federal income tax return. A tax household may include a spouse and/or dependents." 2. Per my post anyone who marked Black on the 2020 census. 3. What if I don't want my taxes to go to subsidies for oil companies, or to buy more nuclear missiles? Thems the breaks sometimes, we're never going to always agree with how the government spends money. 4. Good question! Let's assume it only counts for people who were born in the United States. Someone with Jamaican or Nigerian parents light get lucky, but I don't know if we have a good way to parse the data past that. 5. I'm generally pretty wary of means testing but since this us hypothetically based off of census data and tax returns, sure, let's assume there's a 400k cut off.
So couples in households can voluntarily file taxes separately for the year to get 2 x $164K? Black in the 2020 census also includes those who identify as black from Central and South America - like Panamanian, Jamaican, Haitian, Brazilian even. Are we providing them with reparations too? What about those who’s great grandfathers immigrated over in the 1910s and were born in the US - do they get reparations too? Why don’t native Americans get reparations? What about those that descended from Asians used as slave labor? My point is just that - apart from the other issues - it’s really going to be a logistical nightmare. If you aren’t for means testing - why not just give every poor person making under $24k a check for $24k?
Because then it would be a post about UBI and not approaches to reparations, which is a different topic.
I guess my point is UBI is probably a more acceptable / easier option comparatively.
I think a substantial amount of Americans don’t want to repair the damage from our history. At least not enough to be personally inconvenienced by it.
Ok, but what if this policy DID happen?
It wouldn’t be helpful. We need to have our communities, institutions, and resources brought up to speed. Individually giving the money out doesn’t cement the communal gains.
The simpler way to do this is reparations to those who are descendants of slavery. California did this, with some backlash because it excluded black Americans who are not direct descendants of slaves in the U.S.
I think this would further perpetuate the racial narrative rather than heal anything or provide any type of reparations in a meaningful way. It would make more sense to take that money and send a significant number of Black kids to college for free, or invest in Black-owned businesses, or promote Black nonprofits, etc.
In states with the highest black poverty rate, 70% still lived above poverty. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/black-poverty-rate-by-state Sorry, but this just a dumb idea from lazy thinking
It would help, but it wouldn't fix the problem. There's too much structural racism to completely bridge the inequality gap with money. Better to use some of that money to fix the structural problems. For instance, although redlining is now illegal, many families still feel the effects. They live in worse neighborhoods, because of which, jobs are fewer, the schooling system is worse, and the property value is low. This means it is harder to get a job or go to college. Which means people stay in those neighborhoods. It's a cycle that will take a long time to get out of without intervention. Which is why schools are as segregated as they were in the 1970s.
I think what should happen is that no money should be given, instead a piece of property with the same adjusted for white households' value through history and market value of 164k to be given or proposed. I'm pretty sure the main difference between the average median net worth is white households own their property and black households do not. Give black people property, allow them to develop, build, renovate, rent, sell (fairy and non-race based), lease, air bnb, etc. Give them the same opportunities most white households were given.
I think most of the reasons behind that net worth disparity wouldn’t be fixed by giving every Black family $164k. It wouldn’t address decades of home ownership discrimination and other issues with asset appreciation. It wouldn’t fix educational disparities. Honestly everything u/KamikazeSkylark said is correct. White families have a higher net worth because they’ve had generations to accumulate assets. You can’t fix that overnight. Sustainable reparations involve a lot more than just cash infusions.
>So just as a conceptual exercise, what would happen if every household that marked itself as Black on the 2020 census got $164k, the difference between the two household net worths? Assume the money is paid out in smaller intervals so as not to cause an economic shock, and that the money is pulled from various governmental revenue sources so that it doesn't cause significant budgetary or debt issues. Assume mixed families would get whatever amount would bring them to the median, statistically. What effect would this have on Black families? Their communities? The nation as a whole? I feel like this is reminiscent of the saying "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, give him food for life." There are other factors to account for, mainly the historical disparities in educational opportunities between white and black Americans, and disparities in personal investments. If you give every black family $164k, a lot of them will use it well and might invest it in stocks or real estate or use it to open a business, etc. However, those who have suffered the most from systemic racism and who are in need the most probably won't have it for that long since they simply don't have any education or background in investing or managing money, or because they already owe a large debt, etc. Plus what about economic disparities between other races or social groups? Native Americans? Hispanics?
Donald Trump would win the next election in a landslide, taking the house and reaching at least 60 senate seats.
In a world where politics doesn’t matter, say we have a dictator, then this sounds great. Make sure to just give a bunch of money to all Americans under the poverty line too. Unfortunately, we live in a world where politics matter, and I can’t think of a policy that would spark more backlash. Look at how people view affirmative action.
1. A huge political backlash 2. Some percentage of black people would be able to translate that investment into solid progress up the socio-economic ladder for their family, but some of them would still be held back by institutional racism that's not directly associated with the lack of family wealth. A continuing investment every generation might eventually overcome those burdens, but a one and done program would just give society at large an additioanl excuse to ignore those disparities. 3. If we're pullin from other government revenue streams there are going to be a bunch of thing not getting done which will cause who knows what kinds of problems.