House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on Slavery Reparations (3+ hours)
Very eye opening. JULIANNE MALVEAUX IS IN THE HOUSE, LOVE YOU GIRL. She’s an economist and I just appreciate how she steers the conversation away from emotional pitfalls and shenanigans. Facts. Period.
Keep in mind that those hearings are to decide to create a commission to see how reparations could be done. Checks are not being cut yet. Chill, you whiny taxpayer.
Reparations are due. The detail of what happened to freed slaves and black Americans bootstrapping over and over is there, in history books. The compounding effects are still shaping this country.
Many black Americans know and traced their ancestry down to slavery. It’s not that hard, it’s been going on until quite recently, sadly. There are receipts everywhere.
But what is interesting to me is that the discussion brings the wealth gap problem. Which brings the jobs and wages problem.
The gap is huge and widening while jobs and wages that could help to stop it, disappear and don’t grow.
That means Universal Income and there’s no other possibility. None.
In a few years, white people will have on *average* almost a hundred times more money than black people.
“but what can I do, I never had slaves leave me alone!” First of all, stop being coy about this, it’s not cute. Second, you and your friends could stop gentrifying black and brown neighborhoods, displacing people who, with one or two orders of magnitude less money, are in deep trouble. You are actively fucking them over. Don’t do that.
Third, create that Universal Income right now because the poorest white folks –maybe some are your friends- will need it sooner than later. Like, today actually.
There’s so much money in the hands of not enough people.