Reparations.

I'm going for a big No on that one. I strongly suspect the majority of Americans today want all that forgotten, as if it had happened a thousand years ago, to some whole other nation. Anyway, it all ended with the 13th amendment, in 1865. Nobody lives that long, so every Black person alive today started out all equal and fine, and has nothing to complain about. This is the attitude I most often encounter - like a century is erased from the national memory. They knew nothing about Jim Crow, the scam to arrest Black men and make them work as convict-slaves, miscegenation laws, the KKK, property laws, segregation, lynchings and beatings, discrimination in schools and workplaces ... None of that happened: national amnesia.

As to that, are you old enough to have watched The Jeffersons? It was a spinoff of All in the Family , one of the most honest looks at America that popular television has ever presented. But that was almost half a century ago, and is all ancient history. Since then, the working class, nascent racial conciliation and Black aspiration have all been disappeared.
Yes, I do see your thought-experiment, but I can't really agree with it.
Handing out tickets on the Titanic isn't much of an apology.

 

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OK.

It was mentioned on the news and piqued my curiosity as what could possibly be considered a fair (belated) reparation for a historic wrong.

 

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https://www.thebalance.com/health-care-inequality-facts-types-effect-solution-4174842

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/06/wea...an-poor-and-middle-class-reversing-trend.html

 

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Jeffersons?
You are a little naive my friend. I am a survivor of this little piece of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944–45

I was six. You presume to lecture me about the historical economic importance of the Jeffersons?

 

Really? For you maybe, but why not ask these people who were peacefully engaged in prayer.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ct-arrested-louisiana-church-burnings-n993456

 

Nope. People can do whatever they like, including destroy themselves. It's a free country.
If you start a program to help people, though, it would be wise (IMO) to not make it useful as a tool of destruction.

Nope. People can have whatever relationships they like, including with psychopaths, rapists, criminals etc.
If you start a dating program to help disabled people, though, it would be wise (IMO) not to include psychopaths and rapists in your pool of potential dates.

Yep. See above.

 

Not in the least. I was suggesting a negative aspect to sucking disadvantaged people into the big lie of capitalism; giving them a stake in their own destruction. Turning decent working people into mini Ben Carsons.

I don't follow the connection to WWII.
I did suggest that white Americans are not in a mood to pay any reparations to the descendants of slaves. A good many of them were not even keen on affirmative action to close the gap a little way and it seems to me the deputy's son has more company every day.

Sorry to have offended.

 

No offense taken.
But it's all too easy to "forget" the terrible violence 'misguided" people can inflict on each other.

Did you know the holocaust never happened? 4 million Jews did not die in gas-chambers.
The "final solution" is just a myth, don't you know?

I saw our Jewish family doctor brutally murdered across the street where I lived.
This is why I remember where most would like to forget or minimize the evil. How convenient.

Can you possible place yourself in the shoes of a "slave"? Really?
Many black people can. It is the white people we conveniently forget and white-wash the whole affair.

Isn't there a saying about:
"Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It."

 

That's what I was talking about. The ones who would be required to give up some of their advantage and privilege in order to compensate, even in a very small way, the peoples on whose backs that privilege was created (I don't just mean the slaves, either; all the South American, Pacific and middle eastern nations they've despoiled, and to whom the border is closed....)
and even the Supreme Court doesn't think The Voting Rights Act needs to be ensured anymore, I'm pretty sure it won't force corporations to sign over shares.
There might also be an enormous, expensive and humiliating legal hassle imposed on anyone trying to claim such compensation: Prove your ancestors were slaves. That document is sealed. That document was lost in a fire. That document will cost $50 and take six to ten months. That document is unacceptable. etc etc etc

But my biggest problem with the scheme is the one I outlined before: forcing people to invest in their oppressors' wealth-accumulation.
I can think of some better ways to proceed.

 

That makes no sense whatever.
We would be forcing the oppressors to share some of their accumulated wealth with their victims i.e. reparations.

Lest they forget history.

 

Racial profiling
family money
alumni university enrollment(in private schools & private university's, who cares ! in public schools and public university's, it is equal to racism)
social cultural norms of assumed authority figures

poor person caught smoking a joint(illegal search and evidence planting with no legal representation)
rich person caught smoking a joint(cautioned)

is the law equally applied ?

lawless neighborhoods where USA police shoot first and ask questions later.
police culture training new recruits to shoot first and ask questions later

usa gun culture
usa culture
usa lust for power
usa lust for greed
usa capitalist humans rights culture(those with money have rights, those whom are poor have no rights)

which political party supports which side ?

 

That's one part I don't believe. No government that can possibly get elected in the US is going to do that.
What could maybe happen is that the government hands out stock certificates - after putting the recipients through the above-mentioned legal wringer. Which means:
1. that the government would have to buy shares at market value - which would, of course, go through the roof the minute this news was made public, paying out big dividends to the large stockholders and profits to the stock market speculators.
2. The government uses tax revenue to make the purchases. Working people pay taxes; corporate magnates have exemptions and shelters. So you're making the recipients, and their neighbours who don't benefit from historical wealth distribution, pay for the reparations.
Moreover, those same beneficiaries continue to benefit disproportionately:
3. Every share is an investment in the company, so that it can grow and make more profit.
4. The small shareholders get little tiny dividends; the large shareholders get large dividends; the top brass get huge bonuses, private jets, even bigger expense accounts, and more tax havens.
5. The small shareholders have zero control over the company, its policies and business practices. They're as helpless as ever.
6. And they can't even use the original purchase price to buy a reliable car to get to their crappy jobs, where they have no control over anything.

If you wanted to invest in the disenfranchised people of your country, there are ways that would empower them.

 

quantitative stock easy...

when the government bailed out the big corporates in the 2008 crash, did they devalue the us dollar equally or just print money to be a currency manipulator ?
lol

unless they all band together to vote democratically for a board change/CEO change and advertise to sell to a specific price or buyer...

oh but suddenly democracy and capitalism is not allowed lol !
private equity penis cake sales regulations for all the poor people only.
oh so democracy
lol

 

Not very practical: they're scattered all over the country, don't know one another, and are not free to travel to the stockholder meetings anyway. They have no financial/business advisor to co-ordinate an effort of that magnitude, and most don't have the requisite knowledge. [/QUOTE]

 

proxy vote
the internet
all pay a dollar to pay for the person going to vote.
...
its soo easy
but not if the default is selfish greed

macro-penis-politics of the greedy small hands liberal conservative moral fascist lol
its oh so normal !

apart from the tiny hands penis-party seeking to prosecute facebook members chatting about their stock market shares as collusion to avoid fat rich psychopaths from lording it over the working class.
that is a stock manipulation law of racketeering
liberal conservatives will explain this as a moral outrage for not having a giant picture of a penis on their facebook profile or some such moral absolute.

 

https://citylimits.org/2019/04/11/trump-admin-s-food-stamp-move-could-cost-city-economy-150m/


is anyone talking and/or linking this to farming subsidies ?
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2019/03/trump-budget-seeks-subsidy-cuts-to-farmers/

how do you define a capitalist business that requires 21 billion in government aid every year ?
that doesn't sound like a profit.
that sounds like a loss

 

Who represents them? How do they reach a consensus? How do they find out who else got shares in the same company?
How much do they know about the way corporate decisions are made, protocol, officers, etc, and how much time do they have to learn all that shit when they're working and taking care of their kids? And why should they waste their own precious lives on the running of businesses they're not interested in?You're just giving them more work, instead of benefits.
No, it's not practical.
Like Bells says: if we really cared about making people's lives better, we would ask them what they need. Pay off your mortgage? College tuition? Start your own business? Improve your neighbourhood - better schools, decent daycare, safe playground? Train for a better job? 24-hour walk-in clinic? Produce co-op?
And if some of the people who benefit happen to have be descended from transported prisoners, refugees or migrants, so what?

 

greed morality

why give the greedy more ?

this is the question your asking.

the reality is the over all benefit of cost saving they receive by maximizing their returns on investment.

but... the majority of americans dont recycle because they dont care.
making them care is a complex convoluted question of premise.

https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-018-0347-9

 

During the market collapse, it was so easy to "infuse" stimulus money that congress was not even consulted on doling out a trillion dollars to the poor suffering conglamorates, which was then primarily used for bonuses to the CEOs.

That little trillion dollar bail-out was concluded in a SINGLE DAY. But a few million in small portfolios is IMPOSSIBLE to do for the poor, much too complicated, no?

After a second reading; are you telling me that the descendants of slaves are too dumb to handle money? Are you still advancing that racist 3/4 human notion?
Jeeves, Jeeves, tsk, tsk.