Posted on 03/25/2017 3:17:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For some descendants of persons held in U.S. chattel bondage, no monetary sum can compensate for the enslavement of their ancestors. However, for those looking for a number, there are various ways to calculate the value of involuntary servitude. Here’s one of them.
Calculating Reparations: $1.5 Million for Each Slave Descendant in the U.S.
by Denis Rancourt
This article previously appeared on Mr. Rancourt’s web site, Activist Teacher.
“This calculation includes only the money due to ancestors and their descendants, in terms of the stolen actual labor counted in person-hours.”
It is not difficult to calculate a MINIMUM amount of monetary reparation due to every single Black slave descendant living today in the USA.
If we leave out the reparations for physical violence, genocidal stress, inadmissibility to superior social classes, etc., and only take into account the stolen labor, at the today's equivalent minimum wage, then the calculation for the minimum amount due to the descendants of slaves is a simple one, as follows.
This calculation includes only the money due to ancestors and their descendants, in terms of the stolen actual labor counted in person-hours, based on a minimal economic value of that labor, adjusted at a lowest reasonable rate of interest.
Every step in the following calculation will use the lowest possible evaluators, such as to produce a MINIMUM amount due.
In the 70 year period between 1790 and 1860, there were, on average, 2 million slaves at any time in the USA. In the same period the average US population was 14 million.
Moving forward to 2000, the US population was 309 million, with 40 million slave descendants.
“We adopt the underestimate of 2% for the interest rate to be applied to the stolen income value.”
To obtain a minimal (under estimated) annual interest rate, we use the population increase from 14 million to 309 million in the 140 years from 1860 to 2000. This gives a population annually growth rate of 2.2%.
Now capital value increase interest rates in the US have been much greater that the population growth rate. Nonetheless, we adopt the underestimate of 2% for the interest rate to be applied to the stolen income value. We further apply the interest rate starting only in 1860, rather than earlier, thereby making our estimate even more of an under estimate.
The value of the stolen labor, for the period 1790 to 1860, at today's US minimum wage of $7.24 per hour is as follows. (Note that using today's minimum wage automatically corrects for valuing the historic currency to its present value.)
70 years (1790 to 1860 period only)
X
2 million slaves (average number in the period used)
X
365 days per year (OK, maybe I should exclude one day off per week?)
X
10 hours of work per day (again a minimum)
X
$7.25 per hour
=
$ 3.7 trillion
Next, I apply the 2% interest rate (compounded annually). This gives a multiplicative factor of (1.02)^140 = 16, for the 140 years from 1860 to 2000. Further compounding could be applied to bring us to the present. (Again, this is a minimum estimate.)
Compounding to 2000, therefore, gives:
$ 3.7 trillion
X
(1.02)^140 (or 16, if you prefer)
=
$ 59.2 trillion
The latter one-time payment would be easy for the USA to make, since its annual GDP is $15 trillion. (Think of a wealthy person's annual salary relative to buying a house in a safe neighbourhood.) The USA would not even need to sell any assets to achieve this modest payment.
For the 40 million Black slave descendants in the US today, the calculated reparation means that US white society owes each and every Black slave descendant a MINIMUM payment of $ 1.5 million, which is long overdue.
“The USA would not even need to sell any assets to achieve this modest payment.”
After the minimum payment is made, it would be appropriate to calculate and pay the addition reparations that are due.
My goal here was to show that these calculations are simple and unambiguous. Understanding the calculated minimum allows one to move forward from that established basis, towards a more realistic reparation number. At the very least, each Black slave descendant can legitimately demand $ 1.5 million payable immediately.
An obvious question that arises from this straightforward calculation is: Why are Black leaders not demanding reparation, as a priority demand?
Denis Rancourt is a former physics professor at the University of Ottawa, and is the author of the book "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism." More essays by this author are HERE.
I’ve really got to arm myself, in case of a reparations-inspired plundering by angry Blacks.
(And yes, I’m aware that Black Freepers and many other Blacks won’t be participating in such a thing.)
In the meantime, the lady who cuts my meat at the store is bi-racial. Does that mean she will only receive $750,000 dollars?
PING!
Minus food, clothing, shelter, child-rearing, etc...
Seems to me that the slave descendants might owe descendants of the owners.
My ancestors were serfs in Germany. Tell Ms. Merkel I’ll take my money in dollars or euros.
Let each of them prove their claim.
They don’t realize that their 8 years of reparations *ended* on January 20, 2017. Now that *that’s* over, the next step is a restoration of “equality before the law”.
It really doesn’t matter how much they get paid. Without good life skills, they’ll be broke within a few years. I read that a whopping 78% of NFL players will go broke within 5 years of retirement
I’m glad I’m not the only one who uses that.
Extrapolating forward to today, calculating conservatively 2 million people (using the number of Union soldiers only--the Confederates weren't fighting to free the slaves so I won't include them) over 150 years since the war resulting in approximately 50 million total descendants of Civil War soldiers or 25 living decedents of each Union soldier.
Figuring the worth of each soldier in today's dollar value at approximately $1.5 million per soldier or $75 trillion total owed to descendants of Civil War soldiers who fought so the slaves could be freed.
$75 trillion owed to the descendants of Civil War combatants less the $60 trillion for reparations to the slave descendants, leaves $15 trillion owed to the white Civil War soldier's descendants or $300,000 for each descendant payable immediately.
This means the whites don't owe the blacks. Instead the blacks owe the whites for they ancestors efforts to free their black slave ancestors.
Sounds fair to me.
Slavery reparations? Does that mean that folks will be paid for their property losses in the 1860s.
“I have no problem with paying reparations to descendants of slaves. I just think that the reparations should be paid ENTIRELY by the Democrat Party, which should be completely liquidated to provide the funds.”
I think you’re on to something there.
The black vote is bought and paid for now by the Democrat party (using other people’s money, of course).
I wonder how much the collective wealth of elite leftists is. Soros, Gates, Rockefeller, etc. And an endless list of leftist elites in academia, boardrooms, legislatures, the judiciary, media, entertainment, and countless overpaid government bureaucrats must have wealth in the trillions.
Tax their assets and retirement accounts at 100% and redistribute to the needy and those needing reparations. Might even have enough to pay off the national debt. The US was almost debt free in the mid-19th-century, before the Civil War. And we’ve never really got back down to that modest level of debt ever since.
“$ 59.2 trillion
The latter one-time payment would be easy for the USA to make, since its annual GDP is $15 trillion. (Think of a wealthy person’s annual salary relative to buying a house in a safe neighborhood.) The USA would not even need to sell any assets to achieve this modest payment.”
Yep, just a modest payment.....
As long as any in thier family does not have a criminal record back to 1864 and they can prove it.
What cost of the arms, legs, eyes lost, families destroyed and property destroyed.
Do we deduct that cost form the "reparations"? My figure is that reparations have already been paid in blood and lives.
Make the descendants of the Arab and Black slave traders pay them!
If I am, it wasn't stolen from blacks. Indians maybe, but they're not howling for reparations. And blacks are also living on "stolen and occupied land," so they have no moral high ground on that front.
(2) Any piece of infrastructure that was built by slaves, and which you use, be it a building or a road, etc, you are benefitting from, therefore you DO owe reparations.
Any infrastructure I use was built with either private money or paid for by my taxes. I'm paid up on those accounts.
No sale.
We have been paying “slave descendants” millions in
reparations ever since LBJ’s “Great Society” when LBJ
cynically remarked that welfare would give Dems the
“#igger” vote for the next hundred years. He was right.
Does anyone really think that PAYING MORE would actually
make the situation any better? Blacks have been victimized
by the Dhimmicrat Party. Used and abused over and over and
over. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
“expecting” a different outcome. (They will get more out
of TRUMP than they would have the Clintons.)
Thought obama was going to make it good..??
Somewhere back in time, everyone was a slave. Where’s my reparations?
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