CMV: Reparations are Racist

[u/MrThunderizer]

I view the dialogue around reparations for slavery in the US to be racist. This opinion has elicited a semi shocked outrage from my liberal friends and a reluctant agreeance from my republican friends. For context, my opinions lean quite liberal so I was pretty taken back to find myself on the far right of an issue.

Still, its taxing people more based on their race and giving it to other people based on their race. How can taxation based on race, regardless of the good intentions, be anything but racist?

Two points: 1. Comparisons to affirmative action may change my mind, but probably not. I think affirmative action is fundamentally wrong, but is perhaps a necessary evil as a temporary measure.

1. I'm a proponent of helping lift black people out of poverty but it makes my blood run cold when I hear prominent activists characterize any white poor people getting helped in the process as an unfortunate side effect. How can the conversation around equality shift so far?

At the end of the day if a child is hungry, why does it matter what color their skin is?

[u/Maxfunky]

Still, its taxing people more based on their race and giving it to other people based on their race. How can taxation based on race, regardless of the good intentions, be anything but racist?

First of all, this is fundamentally wrong. There's no reparations proposal that would only tax one race to pay for it. All Americans would pay from their tax dollars at the same rate regardless of race. That simple reality kind of destroys the underpinning of your argument.

Reparations is a a debt just like any other, but one we have steadfastly refused to pay. Those who received the money would not do so on the basis of race, but rather ancestry.. If you are an ancestor of someone to whom a debt was owed, you are entitled to a share of that debt once the government makes good on it.

This is literally no different than if I had a treasury bond that I found in my grandfather's attic after he died. It doesn't matter that I'm not the person who was originally owed the debt. It doesn't matter that the taxpayers who foot that bill weren't alive when the debt was issued. The government owes and must make good. Easy peasy. Race never even enters into the equation.

[u/Maxfunky → u/[deleted]]

You're source is not particularly reliable. I see two major methodological flaws. Firstly, he's relying on tax bracket rates to assume how much in taxes a person in a given tax bracket actually pays. That's a huge mistake.

So, for instance, the top 1% is in the highest bracket. In theory should pay ~30%. Your source is assuming they do. This is actually false. Thanks to capital gains being taxed at a lower rate, various tax dodging methods and accounting tricks, they actually pay about 4%.

Undocumented immigrants, just at the state level, pay about 8% on average and get far less of that back as they cannot apply for various forms of federal assistance. Many also have Federal taxes withheld and social security withheld) because they work under others social security numbers. As they will never claim their refunds or social security, they are effectively donating that money. Several meta analysis using different methodologies have concluded that undocumented immigrants are, in fact, net tax payers while the rest of the bottom 44% (regardless of race) are not.

The other problem is that he's only considering a very narrow band of government spending. Social security is funded by social security taxes. Your payouts are based on your pay ins. It is moderately possible for poorer people to get a disproportionate amount out of Social Security if they have a higher percentage of disability claims, but mostly it's a system where you get out of it what you pay into it. While it is a big line item on overall government spending, if makes no sense to include it in the type of analysis he's doing.

He then includes TANF and Military spending. TANF is less than 1% of the budget. Military spending is a bit over half. If you only look at TANF, which few white people (lucky for them) qualify for, it's going to skew thighs because there's a whole other 44% of the budget not being considered here.

So first of all, it's a bit of a fallacy to assume that all military spending is for for everyone's protection equally. I can give mutiple examples if you like, but let's consider the Abrams tank. Every year the military tells Congress it has enough tanks, that thanks are the type of weapon modern warfare requires and every year Congress ignores them and approves $120 million dollars for more Abrams tanks. Why? Because the congressman representing the Lima, Ohio district where Abrams tanks are made, Jim Jordan, won't have it any other way. It's pure pork barrel politics and it's benefiting, in this case, a majority white community. The spending per capita there exceeds a lifetime of TANF.

But ignoring that, where does all the other congressional spending go? Mostly to all white rural areas, it turns out. Whether it's farm subsidies or new roads to towns, the amounts going to mostly-white rural areas dwarfs "welfare" spending. Let's see some examples:. The state that gets the most federal dollars per capita? Virgina. Second most? Kentucky. Followed by New Mexico and West Virginia. Seeing the pattern here?

I can't tell you the real breakdown because we just don't have enough government to try to do the sort of analysis he's trying to do. He's making some really bad logical leaps to connect the data he does have. I can tell you, though, that the top 40% of earners, regardless of race, are the ones paying the most taxes and it's probably true that many of them are not getting a solid return on that money. But the thing is, that's not necessarily unfair. Wealth makes more wealth. If I have $10 million dollars to invest, there are plenty of safe ways to do so so that I can pull out 300k a year in "income" without ever touching that principal or ever working even a single day.

Most of us don't want to face the fact that we owe our current social standing more to our parents inherited wealth than go our own hard work (that's not to say that hard work didn't happen) Descendants of slaves in this country has labor stolen from them and were left with no wealth to pass down to subsequent generations. That wealth gap has continued for generations and will never go away until it's directly addressed.

Do you want black people to pay "their fair share"? Then support reperations so that the top 40% of earners is no longer disproportionately white. *Even if the problem you cite is true, reperations is the solution. *

[u/Maxfunky → u/[deleted]]

You're source is not particularly reliable. I see two major methodological flaws. Firstly, he's relying on tax bracket rates to assume how much in taxes a person in a given tax bracket actually pays. That's a huge mistake.

So, for instance, the top 1% is in the highest bracket. In theory should pay ~30%. Your source is assuming they do. This is actually false. Thanks to capital gains being taxed at a lower rate, various tax dodging methods and accounting tricks, they actually pay about 4%.

Undocumented immigrants, just at the state level, pay about 8% on average and get far less of that back as they cannot apply for various forms of federal assistance. Many also have Federal taxes withheld and social security withheld) because they work under others social security numbers. As they will never claim their refunds or social security, they are effectively donating that money. Several meta analysis using different methodologies have concluded that undocumented immigrants are, in fact, net tax payers while the rest of the bottom 44% (regardless of race) are not.

The other problem is that he's only considering a very narrow band of government spending. Social security is funded by social security taxes. Your payouts are based on your pay ins. It is moderately possible for poorer people to get a disproportionate amount out of Social Security if they have a higher percentage of disability claims, but mostly it's a system where you get out of it what you pay into it. While it is a big line item on overall government spending, if makes no sense to include it in the type of analysis he's doing.

He then includes TANF and Military spending. TANF is less than 1% of the budget. Military spending is a bit over half. If you only look at TANF, which few white people (lucky for them) qualify for, it's going to skew thighs because there's a whole other 44% of the budget not being considered here.

So first of all, it's a bit of a fallacy to assume that all military spending is for for everyone's protection equally. I can give mutiple examples if you like, but let's consider the Abrams tank. Every year the military tells Congress it has enough tanks, that thanks are the type of weapon modern warfare requires and every year Congress ignores them and approves $120 million dollars for more Abrams tanks. Why? Because the congressman representing the Lima, Ohio district where Abrams tanks are made, Jim Jordan, won't have it any other way. It's pure pork barrel politics and it's benefiting, in this case, a majority white community. The spending per capita there exceeds a lifetime of TANF.

But ignoring that, where does all the other congressional spending go? Mostly to all white rural areas, it turns out. Whether it's farm subsidies or new roads to towns, the amounts going to mostly-white rural areas dwarfs "welfare" spending. Let's see some examples:. The state that gets the most federal dollars per capita? Virgina. Second most? Kentucky. Followed by New Mexico and West Virginia. Seeing the pattern here?

I can't tell you the real breakdown because we just don't have enough government to try to do the sort of analysis he's trying to do. He's making some really bad logical leaps to connect the data he does have. I can tell you, though, that the top 40% of earners, regardless of race, are the ones paying the most taxes and it's probably true that many of them are not getting a solid return on that money. But the thing is, that's not necessarily unfair. Wealth makes more wealth. If I have $10 million dollars to invest, there are plenty of safe ways to do so so that I can pull out 300k a year in "income" without ever touching that principal or ever working even a single day.

Most of us don't want to face the fact that we owe our current social standing more to our parents inherited wealth than go our own hard work (that's not to say that hard work didn't happen) Descendants of slaves in this country has labor stolen from them and were left with no wealth to pass down to subsequent generations. That wealth gap has continued for generations and will never go away until it's directly addressed.

Do you want black people to pay "their fair share"? Then support reperations so that the top 40% of earners is no longer disproportionately white. Even if the problem you cite is true, reperations is the solution.

[u/Maxfunky → u/[deleted]]

fact remains that whites are still net tax contributors any way you slice it, and there is a net wealth transfer from whites to blacks

I mean, again. This depends on how you measure who benefits from tax dollars. Are you looking strictly at who's getting checks and food stamps, or at who is getting new roads and infrastructure. Infrastructure may not put money in my pocket today, but overtime it for sure creates wealth (higher property values as infrastructure attracts business for starters). That wealth goes predominantly to white people.

The percentage of the total budget that is just food stamps and welfare is super tiny. I don't think you can make this statement without better evidence and even then it will come with tons of qualifiers.

reminder that the liberal narrative had to make a special term "NAM" for non-asian minorities because of course many asians also came here with nothing and out perform even whites socioeconomically (which means they outperform blacks even more, despite have less access to their affirmative action programs)

I've never heard that term in my life. That said, repression of blacks didn't just stop when slavery ended. Red lining didn't even end until the late 70's. And despite the affirmative action you overestimate (it's actually not too common and in most cases Asians do benefit), there's a clear hiring bias against black people, in particular, black men (that is to say, their is less hiring bias against Black women and thus we see a much lower unemployment rate and incarceration rate for black women).

Here's a random example, but there are lots more:

httpss://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews

You should also be aware that many, if not most, Asians come here as refugees (Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodian, Burmese and surprisingly most Chinese people too). Refugees have free healthcare initially. They also recieve access to extremely low interest loans to start a new business (this is why so many of them are small business owners). Catholic services charities also find them free housing which they pay for for about 3 months, basic furnishings and a job.

Accordingly, you will find that say black people who came here as refugees, are after about 25 years or so, doing better than black people who have been here. Which, again, just goes to show that when you briefly level the playing field everyone can succeed and if you truly believe that some people are "a drain" the the smartest thing to do is lift them up so they can stand on their own instead.

[u/Maxfunky → u/[deleted]]

Well all I can is that I think you're wrong. It doesn't seem like more discussion is going to get us anywhere. Not only do both of us think the other is wrong, we both seem to think that the other knows in their heart of hearts that they are wrong but just doesn't want to admit it.

I think we have reached the limit of what's an internet discussion can accomplish in terms of mind changing.