WE? Aren’t you from Canada?
Who should not receive reparations?
Regards,
Shodan
ICYMI, Charles Schwab is still alive.
First, the rabbit hole I’m talking about is reparations in general. Second, you don’t think we have debates about reparations in Canada? We’ve been paying reparations of one sort or another to our native populations for decades. Guess what it hasn’t done? It hasn’t solved the serious problems facing indigenous people. In fact, a lot of what we did to ‘help’ made things worse. For example, we considered that one problem was that the lives of people on reservations were poor compared to those who had moved away, so we gave special benefits to people who lived on reservations. That resulted in locking people into the reservations where there were no job opportunities, creating a culture of dependency. We then provided government schools, which were horribly mismanaged and led to all kinds of abuses. We gave them exclusive rights to run casinos or buy untaxed cigarettes, tax exemptions for just about everything, etc.
One of the byproducts of this is corruption and crime. Government money flows to the indigenous groups with the most political power, which are often run by Chiefs and elders who make sure to line their pockets heavily at the expense of their own people. They then have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. Criminal elements moved in to exploit things like tax-free cigarettes, selling them to non-Native people for big profit. None of this activity and money made it down to the people who really needed it.
Reparations in the U.S. will be the same. They’ll be hijacked by the political powerful race hucksters who will insinuate themselves into the process and take a major cut. There will be distortions for political purposes, and reparations money could well prevent disadvantaged people from taking the steps necessary to improve their permanent life outcome, such as moving out of a distressed area - much as government projects to ‘help’ African-Americans often had the perverse effect of locking them into crime-ridden areas with lousy schools, thereby making them dependent on government forever.
No-let’s stick with the ongoing conversation, shall we?
What is your objections to the reparations I have proposed concerning native Americans?
That’s a head spinning statement, even from you. Any form of reparations not tied to being a direct personal victim* would be highly divisive and further weaken the country from that divisiveness. That’s almost too obvious IMO to even debate. Although, rather than saying ‘we need more study…’ I suppose you could reasonably say we need more time to convince the large majority of Americans in every poll I’ve seen that it’s actually not unfair as they believe it is. There is no way it would ‘strengthen America’ if imposed today, just from the divisiveness.
Which means it must be justified based on who ‘deserves’ it in some moral sense which overrides any consideration of overall national welfare.
Again reparations as discussed in *, and not just any public policy to try to close economic gaps (and the education, skills, productivity gaps that cause a lot of them) in a race blind way. The latter is a broad field for discussion and debate but isn’t reparations.
*IOW not counting cases like particular living people of Japanese descent themselves held in WWII internment camps, and this could also apply to blacks or natives the victims of particular public policies against them personally rather than against deceased ancestors, or in case of blacks who are immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean just being the same color as deceased persons treated unjustly in the US.
Huh? It was a question, not a statement. I’m not sure what you’re objecting to.
Yep, straight white Christian males are the only non- disadvantaged group. Maybe 25% of the population.
This is the only truly logical response in the thread so far. Let’s break it down, shall we?
The only thing that’s holding back the lives of women who are alive right now is whether we discriminate against women right now, because women have as many “advantaged” (male) parents as men do, so there’s no opportunity to transmit disdvantage through the generations.
The only thing that’s holding back the lives of LGBT people who are alive right now is whether we discriminate against LGBT people right now, because LGBT people have as many “advantaged” (straight) parents as straight people do (ie, most of them), so there’s no opportunity to transmit disadvantage through the generations.
There** is **an opportunity to transmit disadvantage through ethnic groups, since there’s a big difference between the number of (for example) black parents that today’s black people have, and the number of black parents that today’s white people have. If your ethnic group gives you a worse chance of starting off with at least some inherited wealth, you’re a good category for financial help.
There also is an opportunity to transmit disadvantage through birthplace … it’s well known that some areas of the country are less wealthy than other areas, so being born in a disadvantaged area also gives you less chance of starting off with some inherited wealth. So “less wealthy region” is also a good category for financial help which does in fact happen - there are plenty of statistics out there about which American states, for instance, are net givers of tax revenue and which are net receivers. And that wealth transfer goes on continually all the time. Unlike the sort of reparations which are currently under discussion, which are a “one-off” proposition.
You take out all the disadvantaged groups, leaving just straight white Christian males, and you only have left maybe 25%. So 75% get ponies, and 25% foot the bill. 100% tax rates and confiscation of all property should cover it.
If we could limit that to alt-righters, Southern Apologists and certain hard core Churches that call themselves “Christian” but dont follow the teachings of Jesus, I’d be all for it.
So, should white males historically subject to the draft be given reparations? How about the families and descendants of those whose lives and/or incomes were lost due to being drafted to war?
My grandfather was drafted to work in a factory in Ontario during WWII, losing his farm in the process. He came back and wound up working in odd jobs for two decades, saving up to buy his farm back. Should I get reparations? If he had been allowed to stay on the farm my life would be very different. How about my mother? She grew up dirt poor, but could have grown up as the daughter of wealthy farm owners. And should the family who got the farm pay me reparations? They benefited from my grandfather being forcibly taken off his land.
Under what logic can we say that such people don’t deserve reparations, while someone who lost income or liberty because of another form of disparate treatment does?
Again nobody has proposed this craziness as a solution…other than those oppose reparations across the board. This straw man is going nowhere.
Well, yeah. We could tax everyone to pay to the 80%. But if you take $100 from everyone, and hand out $120K to the 80%, you have effectively taxed the 20% only, i.e. the white straight Christen men . **It’s basic math. **
Math has always been the weak point in Reparations debates, which is why Coates articles are pretty much math free. And specifics free. He just wants us all to agree to reparations, and then he will tell us how much they will cost. (Hint- it’s either too much, or way too fucking much, but you have already agreed, so suck it up!)
The question is not who SHOULD, but who should NOT.
No, lets stick with **the OP **instead.
So is David Rockefeller, Elon Musk, and several members of the Walton family, and yet their getting millions, and in some instances billions in US tax dollars. Let’s stop doing that, and give it to someone more in need.
So if white males should NOT get reparations, why not? Millions of them were dragged out of their homes and workplaces and sent to war against their will. If reparations are about damages, white males have been plenty damaged by wars and other things. If it’s just about distributing resources to favored groups who have current ‘oppressed’ status, then just call it socialism and admit what’s going on.
He brought up the conditions needed to justify reparations, and I responded with an example and asked for his reaction. Where do you come into this?
Ok, you have sorta made my point.
Giving tax money to a narrowly defined group of people with self-inflicted problems does not make the country stronger.