Should we pay Reparations for Slavery?

[MountCleaners]

24. Yes.

A long time ago, I read Randall Robinson's book The Debt. I recommend it to anyone interested in this issue.

Randall Robinson has many videos and articles online.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4352483/randall-robinson-reparations

This article, by Chuck Collins, who deems himself "one of the 1%" in terms of wealth, points out how whites have benefited from their own "Affirmative Action":

In the case of racial economic divisions, the full horror of dispossession remains difficult to grasp. In 1965, a century after the formal end of slavery, African-Americans were still largely excluded from programs that helped build middle-class wealth. In the decades following World War II, our nation made unprecedented public investments to subsidize debt-free college education and low-cost mortgages. But these wealth-building measures benefited millions of mostly white households.

It is true, of course, that many people have not shared in the economic gains equally, thanks to four decades of hyper-inequality. Today, the wealthiest 100 billionaires in the US have as much wealth as the entire African-American population combined. For this reason, I propose two concrete mechanisms to fund a national Reparations Trust Fund. The first is a graduated tax on wealth and inherited wealth. Households with wealth in excess of $5 million would pay a 1% tax, but rates would climb for billionaire households.

Secondly, I propose that the fund be capitalized in part by hefty penalties on wealthy individuals and corporations that attempt to move their funds “off-shore” or into complicated trusts to avoid taxation and accountability. There would also be stiff penalties assessed on wealth managers who aid and abet these wealth escapes by creating trusts and off-shore subsidies for the sole purposes of tax dodging.

He goes on to list the forms reparations may take. Sounds great to me, and it would signal that the US is ready to move forward and truly invest in ALL of its people.

The commission could investigate many different forms of reparations. In his book published, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, Randall Robinson talks about a wide range of ways that reparations could be used, including the funding of cultural institutions, community initiatives, direct cash grants, and targeted wealth-building programs.

https://qz.com/1012692/this-is-what-reparations-could-actually-look-like-in-america/