I've heard people making that point - that the real purpose of this proposal is to eliminate the income tax altogether (and presumably replace it with a sales tax). I guess the full plan has a schedule something like this:
2004 - Keyes wins election promising African-American's reparations by exempting them from the income tax for two generations.
2005 - Keyes convinces the Congress to grant reparations to African-Americans by exempting them from the income tax for two generations.
2006 - Keyes convinces the Congress to eliminate the income tax for everyone and to replace it with a sales tax.
Now, at that point, do you suppose that African-Americans might wonder what happened to their reparations?
No. They'll wonder why WE got reparations, too :o)
Bingo.
After all, the underlying premise of "reparations" is "wealth transfer/redistribution" (coincidentally an underlying premise of socialism, but hey...)
Take away the inherent "unfairness", and you took away the reparations!
I mean, if the premise of "reparations" is to "take from whitey and give to the brothers", and suddenly, you're NOT taking anything from W to give to B, then there are no more reparations!
And at that point, you can bet something's gonna have to give, or else!
I think we all know that this "plan" ain't gonna work, ain't gonna happen, and isn't even intended to happen -- that it's just a "bomb-throwing" exercize on Alan's part.
The big question is why Alan has decided to become a bomb-thrower.
The way I see it, the possible answers ain't very pretty. Either he went nuts, or he's been lying to us all along, or... hell, I dunno. Cranial accident?
You sound like a lawyer. ; )
Except the second of those will never happen. I confess I have no idea what keyes intentions are, but what it works out to is that this idea illustrates a fundamental truth that the American black community and other liberals needs to hear at every turn - without telling them directly but rather letting them find it out themselves:
Exempted from taxes? Great! But wait, do we actually PAY any taxes?
Cutting income taxes is an incentive to wealth building for blacks? Great! But then, doesn't that mean it is for everyone?
So forth and so on...it's like an entire economics course wrapped up in one thesis. The more you deconstruct it, the more lessons libs need to learn pop out of it.
In the end, tthose lessons will be ignored and the plan won't b enacted - or the lessons will be applied and the snowball of income tax reformabolition will overwhelm this idea.
Either way - it's never going to be enacted and will, most likely, be a quaint anacranisim by this time next year.