Fox News Opinion Page:
The writer of this opinion piece has it exactly right.
The San Francisco reparations idea will not make anything better for the black or other minority groups. In fact, it will do nothing more than create a greater racial divide than before. That is what the Democrats are really working towards. And remembering what is written in the Communist Manifesto, that is exactly what they are doing. Creating divisions between the different groups within America.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the divides we have right now. Racial, religions, mask v. non-mask, vaccine v. vaccine, rich v. poor, sexuality, abortion, climate change, animal rights, gun rights, etc. And before you laugh, animal rights are in the Communist Manifesto. Sadly, I have to say that most of these issues were created from the left side of the aisle.
Getting back to the idea of these reparations that San Francisco is wanting to do, it won’t work. Plain and simple, it won’t fix a damn thing.
First issue: The $5 million dollars per black person is refundable. Each non-family member being placed on the hook for $600,000 is going to do nothing but make people flee the city. But that is probably about the only way that the number of houses would become available for the second issue. Mind you, this $600,000 tax bill is for all non-black families regardless of when their families came to America or were a part of slavery.
Second issue: The ability to buy homes for only $1. First, how are that many houses going to become available in a city that tends to have half-million-dollar homes and still has a housing shortage? Is the city going to buy the houses at current rates to sell to black families? If so, where is that money coming from? Or are they going to use eminent domain to take homes away from non-black families? Second on this issue, how will the housing market handle this sudden change in house prices? In my opinion, it will completely crash the housing market as people flee the new tax burden.
Third issue: Elimination of personal debt. This I assume would include all debts that these black families obtained up to a certain date that I am sure will need to be posted. So, not knowing any one person’s personal debts, that is a number that the city has no clue as to how much is. Not to mention, once you do post the cut-off date for the personal debt to be claimed, I’m sure many will go out and jack up all their credit cards, get new cards, new cars, trucks, etc. for the taxpayer to pay for. At least the removal of tax burdens can be figured out by running an IRS and California Franchise audit.
Forth issue: Guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for 250 years. So this is where I see many companies in the city of San Francisco fleeing. I see big and small businesses leaving the city to ensure that they don’t have to pay a housekeeper $97,000. If it won’t be the companies that have to pay the $97,000, but the city supplementing the income with more tax dollars? Either way, other employees will probably leave their jobs in San Francisco because of the unfair wage difference. I mean, how many people want to work for $35,000 dollars at a job where the employee next to them is making 3 times that amount for the same job?
All of that will bankrupt the city of San Francisco very quickly and destroy all possible race relationships between non-blacks and everyone else. Not you mention, as a Mexican-American (only use that term for this purpose, I hate hyphenated American terms,) is the next minority group to get reparations going to be the Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, etc.? Just take the Native Americans for a quick spin on this horrible idea of reparations. They were here before any European or African person was on the shores and owned all of the lands. Yet, from battles, treaties that were broken, and children taken and placed in Indian Schools far from their families, they got very little. In fact, once slavery was brought to America, many slaves and non-slave black fought against the Natives America tribes, so do they get to have some of that $5 million dollars from the black families in San Francisco?
My point is this. Yes, slavery was 100% wrong and the history of it is a very sad mark on not America, but the whole world. But none of the people alive today were slaves, none have even the faintest memory of it personally. But there were other groups that were wronged in the process of building this country. So where would reparations stop? The worst part of this idea is that it will not help race relations, but only make them worst than they are today. In fact, it would probably throw us back as a country to a time right after the Civil War. If not be a catalase of the next one.