The blacks drive a tough bargain. $6.2 quadrillion is a lot of money.
But fair is fair.
Their ancestors were able to conjure up all of that cotton we used to build the country out of, so we really do owe them all the money.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a letter backing a Democratic plan to form a reparations commission to come up with a payment for slavery.
“We recognize and support your legislation as a concrete first step in our larger reckoning as a nation, and a next step to guide the actions of both federal and local leaders who have promised to do better by our black residents,” said the letter from conference President Greg Fischer, mayor of Louisville.
Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee have introduced legislation to create a commission, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
In introducing her bill to the House last year, Jackson Lee said, “The commission aims to study the impact of slavery and continuing discrimination against African-Americans, resulting directly and indirectly from slavery to segregation to the desegregation process and the present day. The commission would also make recommendations concerning any form of apology and compensation to begin the long delayed process of atonement for slavery.”
Since then, reparations have continued to draw attention, and the issue was elevated further during the recent Black Lives Matter protests.
Long at the center of the debate has been the potential price tag of paying slavery descendants, for which studies broadly include most or all of the 41 million black people in the country.
A new study from three college professors said that the ultimate cost could be $6.2 quadrillion. Quadrillion comes after trillion, and one quadrillion has 15 zeros.
The study suggests a payment of $151 million each, and the cost to every person would be $18.96 million.
The calculation is somewhat complicated, but it essentially studies the unpaid hours slaves worked, calculates a price for massacres and discrimination, and adds in interest. It is titled “Wealth Implications of Slavery and Racial Discrimination for African American Descendants of the Enslaved.” It was published last month in the the Review of Black Political Economy.
If we were serious for a moment here: it would be worth paying these people $6.2 quadrillion if they would agree to leave.
Obviously, that’s many times more money than exists in the world. But it would be worth giving blacks all the money in the world plus even more if they would just agree to leave us alone.
But that won’t happen.
They will blow that $6.2 quadrillion on house parties, Nikes and crack cocaine in a week’s time, then start rioting again and telling us we owe them.