Here is my response to the identical thread yesterday:
Here is a common theme among these spoiled little asswipes: somebody else should pay for any idea that comes to mind, so long as it sounds like it would be “good” or “fair.” There is never any deeper analysis than that.
WRT this issue, there is no analysis regarding whether anyone living today committed any wrongs (which is impossible, as no one alive today is old enough to have owned a slave legally in the United States), nor about who actually committed the wrongs (specifically referring to various African tribes that sold their neighbors into slavery), nor about whether anyone today actually suffered (which is impossible, as no one living in the United States today is old enough to have been legally held as a slave in or before 1865), nor about whether any of the proposed beneficiaries of such reparations might also be held partially responsible to pay such reparations because they are descended from slaveholders.
I’d also like to make mention of the fact that I know for certain that none of my direct ancestors were even present in this country until at least 1904. They were, prior to that time, being oppressed by the Czar of all the Russias, either in Russia itself or in Eastern European territory ruled by the Czar. As such, I cannot be held to bear any responsibility, nor can my mother nor my children. My wife, being a legal immigrant from Mexico, never had a single ancestor in this country, ever. She first arrived here in 1999, some 134 years after slavery was abolished. How can any of us be held to account for those crimes?
The common thread here is that the Millennials, and anyone else in favor of slave reparations, is simply not thinking. Either that, or they know all of the above quite well and seek to redistribute wealth. In that case, they are simply being dishonest. So, all of these people are either ignorant jackasses, or they are dishonest jackasses. Take your pick, but either way I refuse to pay.
Beyond that, of course, is the question of what the various so-called anti-poverty programs of the last 50 years count for. To my way of thinking, since a substantial portion of those incredibly expensive programs have gone to the descendants of slaves, these amounts should be counted as previously paid reparations. Frankly, the amount probably exceeds 1 trillion dollars. Therefore, I propose that the reparations have already been paid in full, and that such anti-poverty programs which benefit descendants of slaves should be cut off in their entirety, immediately. Let the millennials stick that one where the sun don’t shine.
Of all the peoples of history who were oppressed and eventually freed, I can find none as under-achieving as American blacks. Things seemed to go off the rails around the time the “Great Society” came into being. I don’t think any amount of “reparations” will help them get their act together. Their so-called leaders totally bamboozled them for their own gain.
“the amount probably exceeds 1 trillion dollars.”
PER YEAR.
Adjust for inflation, assume we’re paying even more than that now, etc I’d hazard a guess that we’ve been spending the inflation-and-population-adjusted equivalent of $1T/yr for the last 150 years. So...is the equivalent of $150,000,000,000,000 enough? does that cover reparations sufficiently? Can we be done with this nonsense yet, and say we’ve completed it such that everyone from now on is duly compensated and their lives are their own concern now? if not, then let’s start by establishing exactly what constitutes “acceptance criteria” to wit what suffices for done-and-over-with.