>descendants of slaves are due reparations from the U.S. government for the harms caused by slavery.
The U.S. government can only extort this from innocent people.
>we can use social science to determine how their lives would have been going if their ancestors had not been enslaved.
Those particular people would not exist. The people that do exist are better off by existing and by living in the U.S.
> if they had come to the U.S. voluntarily and lived their lives freely, their descendants would be better off than they are.
They would have stayed in Africa, often as the slaves of other blacks.
>Having to pay taxes to cover reparations is not a punishment. At least, it is no more of a punishment than having to pay taxes to fund the military, to pay for government employee salaries or to satisfy the requirements of international treaties.
All equally bad “punishments”.
>Taxpayers pay to fund the government, allowing the government to pay its debts. Period.
And they should stop paying.
>We may, of course, think the government should not have incurred certain debts. .. The fact is, it did—and those debts must, morally speaking, be paid.
If criminal gangs (or governments, but I repeat myself) have incurred certain debts should they be paid when that can only be done by more extortion?
>All that said, it might also be worth considering funding reparations by selling federal property, …
That property is owed to the U.S. populace as a whole: they would have owned it already but for the U.S. government.
… Letting politics defeat that duty would be more than unfortunate: It would leave us little reason to have faith that America can be a moral leader, that our government can stand for good.
>descendants of slaves are due reparations from the U.S. government for the harms caused by slavery.
The U.S. government can only extort this from innocent people.
>we can use social science to determine how their lives would have been going if their ancestors had not been enslaved.
Those particular people would not exist. The people that do exist are better off by existing and by living in the U.S.
> if they had come to the U.S. voluntarily and lived their lives freely, their descendants would be better off than they are.
They would have stayed in Africa, often as the slaves of other blacks.
>Having to pay taxes to cover reparations is not a punishment. At least, it is no more of a punishment than having to pay taxes to fund the military, to pay for government employee salaries or to satisfy the requirements of international treaties.
All equally bad “punishments”.
>Taxpayers pay to fund the government, allowing the government to pay its debts. Period.
And they should stop paying.
>We may, of course, think the government should not have incurred certain debts. .. The fact is, it did—and those debts must, morally speaking, be paid.
If criminal gangs (or governments, but I repeat myself) have incurred certain debts should they be paid when that can only be done by more extortion?
>All that said, it might also be worth considering funding reparations by selling federal property, …
That property is owed to the U.S. populace as a whole: they would have owned it already but for the U.S. government.
… Letting politics defeat that duty would be more than unfortunate: It would leave us little reason to have faith that America can be a moral leader, that our government can stand for good.
That “faith” looks more like a delusion.