If you consider San Francisco mighty generous for proposing to pay Black residents $5 million each in slavery reparations, then you are a cold-hearted, skin-flinted cheap skate. In fact, one local leader dismisses this hefty sum as "very minuscule."
"I don’t think you can put a figure to taking someone from their country, raping and pillaging their communities, not allowing them the chance to reproduce, not allowing them the chance to raise a family and grow wealth, making them work for free," said Shamann Walton, a member and immediate past president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
Walton told National Review’s Brittany Bernstein that "most certainly the 5 million is a very minuscule number compared to a lot of research that has been done over the past couple of decades, quite frankly."
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Shamann Walton is right: If people exist who were brought to America in chains, raped, and forced to labor without wages, they should sue their owners and make them pay until they bleed.
The bad — but incredibly good — news is that America has lacked both slaves and slave owners since the Civil War ended in April 1865.
Any child born into slavery that month would be 157 today or, more likely, dead.
Ditto any slaveholder who would be older — or even deader.
Since the parties directly affected by slavery are long gone, the questions of who would collect and who would pay reparations quickly become self-entangling.
Local officials are weighing other concepts including "a comprehensive debt forgiveness program" for Blacks and a plan to boost poor Blacks’ earnings to match the $97,000 Area Median Income — "for at least 250 years."
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Would shoveling out this kind of cash until 2273 A.D. bankrupt this town?
No way, Walton said reassuringly. "I would say that we’re a very fiscally responsible city."
To give $5 million to each of America’s 42 million Black citizens would cost $210 trillion. This equals 667% of the $31.5 trillion U.S. national debt. These $210 trillion could fund the Pentagon’s $740 billion FY 2022 budget until 2307 A.D. — 284 years hence.
If you think egg prices are high now, just wait until Joe Biden hears about San Francisco’s big idea.
