reparations

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Sep 24 08:59:24 PDT 1999


At 11:05 AM 9/24/99 -0400, you wrote:
>[bounced for an address oddity]
>
>From: "Alex Lantsberg" <alex at saej.org>
>Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 13:49:23 -0700
>
>i was reading the WSJ today and Al Hunt's column did a thing on Bill
>Bradley. He noted an event at
>which BB appeared with Al Sharpton and said something about BB wisely
>not supporting reparations.
>
>Whats the establishment reasoning against reparations of some sort
>(not necessarilly cash payments)
>to descendents of slaves?
>

For one thing, I do not see the reason why the entire *United States* should carry the burden of such reparations. Not the whole country institued slavery, only several states. In fact, the United States fought a war against those states and abolished slavery. So it is the states that actually had slavery should be responsible for the reparations - a progressive reparation tax (e.g. starting from a $75 k threshold - on the assumption that it was mostly the rich who benefited from slavery) imposed on the Dixie states would not be such a bad idea after all - especially if the money was used to fund institutions charged with undoing effects of slavery, such as education or job training, rather than individual payments.

wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list