Reparation Abomination Would Prove to Be Unaffordable and Unfair

Wholesale redistribution of wealth has always been the central goal of the egalitarian left, and the moral panic over race in the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 death provided a wedge to open the door at last: racial reparations.

But it is likely a wedge that will split apart the Democratic Party.

California’s state government set up a task force to study reparations, and its first report called for a long menu of remedial measures to help blacks.

While the group was notably silent on a dollar amount, advocates in public hearings demanded direct payments to all California blacks ranging from $350,000 to $800,000, which would cost the state between $784 billion and $1.8 trillion.

Not to be outdone, San Francisco’s own African American Reparations Advisory Committee was less bashful about an explicit cash demand, issuing a report calling for a one-time, lump-sum payment of $5 million for each black person. San Francisco has about 45,000 blacks, making the cost to the city $223 billion. Every non-black person in San Francisco would be on the hook for $263,000 each to pay this transfer. {snip}

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But even this extravagant amount was only a down payment. The report also called for total debt forgiveness, exemptions from business taxes, refinanced mortgages, subsidized housing and a long array of new government programs targeted to blacks only.

One notable feature of all these proposals is that the qualification that a reparations recipient must be a descendent from slaves has been dropped. Now skin color alone qualifies for payment {snip}

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{snip} The working premise that blacks are the only racial or ethnic minority that has faced racism and invidious discrimination is not likely to go down well with Hispanics and Asians, who will be required to pay for reparations along with white Americans.

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