Should Blacks be paid "reparations" today because of slavery in the United States?

Not yet, but in less than a decade it will be larger, and there will be no poverty ie insecure access to food, health and education that will still be the norm for 10% of the US population.

No, only those idiotic ideologies that claim eg, a Job Guarantee is "Marxist".

No

Partly because US wealth is based on mirages like Face-Book (which I never use...) and a vast financial casino industry based on fancy derivatives ("financial weapons of mass destruction": Buffet) with scant relationship to the real economy; but mostly because the US became the world's largest economy over 100 years ago. Modern China began its rise out of agrarian subsistence a mere 40 years ago.

No, but carbon emissions will peak by 2030 (China always achieves its 5-year plans); and minimum wages will be well above slave labour rates by that time. The US will still be arguing over a living wage.

That's certainly the view of the Pentagon; China has woken up fast and has no illusions about trade with the US. eg, Trump taught them they have to create their own IC industry pronto, which they are well on the way to achieving.

Who told you that?

The mob who told you the world was created 6000 years ago?

 

The most coveted jobs in America are Federal and State Civil Service jobs. Why? Their pay is competitive with private industry, 30 days of vacation, all holidays with pay, retirement plans, and health insurance with a an accrued sick day policy like no other. The unspoken policy that is the main draw is once your in it's almost impossible to get one out. It's about as close to a job guarantee as you can get. Due to security reasons they also are hard to obtain if one doesn't have a clean background check. All these jobs are paid for by the tax payer. The majority of the jobs are defense related and the everyday functioning of the government. The question is "what products do they produce"?

I talk to employers all the time and they tell me the hardest part of their business is finding educated people. We have a education system that is a recipe for failure. All these programs aimed at inclusiveness and no child left behind, may sincerely come from the heart and have good intentions, but they do more harm than good. The purpose of school is to educate. If the teachers really loved their children they would try and hold their students to the highest standard of learning available. Discipline needs to be restored in the classrooms, the right to failure needs to be restored. We cannot continue passing along problem children, year after year, at the expense of the many. We can try and give the best education to those who are not up to par with extra tutoring and special education ,but in no way, sacrificing the higher standards of learning. Cruel? Not at all. The mentally challenged are only going to learn so much and at some level that is all that can be done. Why make all suffer by dumbing down the subject matter to fit the lower standard ?

We need to quit encouraging all persons to go to college and open up the fields of learning for trade schools. All work is honorable but not all work is equal. Let us start fitting our kids into the careers that they would best be suited for. When Hillary Clinton wrote that book "It Takes A Village" her intentions were good but it is about time the village started looking at the bottom. If need be we have a duty to hold the parents of all children responsible for getting their children started on the right path. Schools are not there to be baby sitters, they are not there to supply your child with pencils and paper, they are not there to have your child verbally or physically abuse your child's teacher, they are not there to make sure your child does their homework, they are not there to bath and groom your child, they are not there to make sure your child has eaten breakfast. Responsibility starts at home. Civility starts at home. If you love your child and want them to succeed in life discipline starts at home.

 

1. The Job Guarantee CAN be paid for by the government issuing its own debt free money to itself....admittedly a whole new economic heterodoxy that explodes the TINA myth ie "There Is No Alternative"(... to the current neoliberal orthodoxy, which always ends up at the TEA party proposition: "Taxed Enough Already"...).

2. When you start talking about "we" , you really mean the government....because of course only government can introduce community-wide (national) policies.

 

Do you believe that "whitey" condones what happened to Floyd? Do you believe that all the other deaths and destruction of other peoples property and burning down their business was justified? Was the looting justified? What was really accomplished? My hometown of Detroit has went through all this stuff, a couple times, and they have never recovered.

The policy wonks will tell you we are a loving, caring and charitable nation. Were not. There is a sickness of the soul that is at a pinnacle that I have never seen in my lifetime. Maybe I'm just too old and tired. When politicians are confronted with social problems they don't know how to handle they try to isolate them hoping they will go away. Like the Indians, put them on reservations. Like the blacks , at first slavery then segregation. Mental illness, at first institutions and then a grocery cart and a umbrella. Drug addicts and Alcoholics , tent cities with free needles and porta johns. Unwed mothers, abortion clinics or welfare. Unruly or disruptive people, put them in jail with real criminals. People like many on this forum, who voice complaints, put on a terrorist watch list or even a visit from the FBI. 1984 is just a little late but it's not far away. It's not just frustrating for you but for all of us. If they close up forums like this then were can we go?

 

Oh sure we can roll out the printing presses and start printing useless fiat. Inflation zooms and makes everything we own useless. Venezuela showed us that.

We get the government we deserve. We elect our representatives . Maybe the choices we make haven't been so good?

 

Been there a couple times myself. Some humor just goes right over the heads of many. One cannot be a serious person if they take themselves seriously.

 

Human Nature is the exact same today as it was 2000 years ago. It has not improved in the least. Marxist and the left always assert a few of them have risen above it but that is always the lie they base their ideology on. They always, in the end, restrain liberty to correct their flaws.

Has nothing to do with the "poor who we will always have with you." As far as the passage you quote....if you would not be selective, it goes on to say "but with God, all things are possible." The problem is, your Marxist theology ALWAYS leaves God out of the picture.

The left has used public information to portray non-whites as victims "collectively". In reality, human beings are individuals of intrinsic worth and to dent that fact is to rob them of their liberty.

What is really eye opening is you continue to say you "can't wait for China to sail past the United States". That statement should burn like a hot iron in the hearts of every American! A leftist finally admits his true desires. A Communist Nation that enslaves far more than America ever did is your ideal and the horrific experiments it puts on it's people is your goal for us. This is exactly why the Founders put the 2nd amendment right near the top of the list!

 

I know you always defend "government" to defend your Marxist ideology but let me make something perfectly clear. We the People ARE the government but the difference is....we believe the INDIVIDUAL is Supreme. That is why we prefer different levels of Government. State, County and local are levels of government closer to the Individual. They are easier to be held accountable when their power goes crazy. Other levels of governing forces would include PTA', Churches, but most important of all.....the FAMILIES!
The left has been quite diligent for decades to break up the family. Churches are another institution under attack. Public Education is wrested away from local control in many areas by the teachers Union. That is evident how they shut schools despite scientific evidence on the China Virus. Now there are bills before the house where they want to wrest away control of election mandates to a National Level. The Marxists in government are going for complete and absolute control to take away our liberty as individuals.!

 

No, I wouldn't have a problem paying ex-slaves and their first generation born. But after that, no way.

 

Nice meandering post. Why not just call me a racist and be done with it. That is all you have.

No basis to know the IQ of certain groups of Americans? It is called decades of testing.

The average IQ of inner city blacks is low. 75-80. I do not compile or administer IQ tests your libocrat heroes in academia do that so talk to them. According to the first link 20% of blacks have IQ 75 or lower. According to the 2nd link the average IQ of inner city blacks in Baltimore is 76.

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/iq.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/city.htm

It is logical then to ask how people like this can make any practical use of a large sum of money that could realistically improve them long term.

I did not say checks should be administered based on IQ.

 

Blacks paid their dues like whites to create a nation of freedom and justice. Everyone should be proud of it and not seek revenge for past injustice.

 

While I appreciate some of the concerns you express, I can't accept your defeatist philosophy towards, it would seem, any problem that hasn't already been solved, unless it is a completely novel one. Humans often have failures in their attempts to solve problems. Politicians, being to some degree human, are just as prone to these missteps. Nevertheless, any difficult problem that humans have solved, almost invariably has been preceded by numerous failed attempts. The Wright Brothers' first attempt at flight did not succeed. Nor their second, or third. But they didn't give up. Throwing in the towel is rarely an effective strategy. It is only worthwhile when the beating one would sustain in continuing, is worse than losing the fight. As anything resembling an official, "reparations," blueprint is not even, as yet, on the drawing board, I do think it is very premature to already venture a verdict, based solely on attempts that have been made in the past.

https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/failing-for-success-the-wright-brothers

The last real attempt to fix this problem was the 1965 Civil Rights Act. Though that certainly DID benefit our country, LBJ's initiative was starved of financial resources, due to the escalated war in Viet Nam, also brought to us courtesy of Lyndon Johnson.
This is hardly reason to be so dourly pessimistic of what promise may lie in the future.

It should be realized, also, that this is not as simple a problem as an economic downturn (which are often cyclical, & right themselves of their own accord). This is something that will require long-term, sustained effort. Perhaps that is what discourages you. But the impetus, now, is NOT to, "try to isolate, hoping..will go away," the problem of American racism--
so it would be more than shameful for our nation to not have the heart to make the attempt; the racial divide has been a flaw in our American gem since before the landing of the Mayflower, and this fracture, quite clearly, weakens us as a nation, as a society, as a people. Left to persist-- while that, like the path to improvement, will also be a slow process-- it cannot help but worsen, leading ultimately to a catastrophic breakage. As apathetic as events of the world can often make me feel, it would be a tragic failure of our country's spirit to surrender without a fight.

 

It seems African American have overpaid and are left with little. The larger society since Emancipation has consistently prevented Blacks from accumulating wealth. The mean wealth of the white population is $171k and that of the black population is $17k. If you do not know the reason for this you don't know much about US history.
The cure would be making amends.

 

Self-evident nonsense. The people ELECT their government, but few people ARE the government.

All just 'sovereignty of the individual' nonsense. Government and rule of law is required to adjudicate between self-interested individuals.

All ideological nonsense, as addressed above.

 

Human nature is the reason government and rule of law was created, to allow development of civilization among competitive, self-interested individuals without destructive anarchy (though of course we have much to achieve yet re rule of law eg eradication of war.)

Firstly, there is a difference between being "poor" cf, living in poverty. Government can ensure access to food, housing, education and heath-care. for the working poor (if the economy is so lacking that people who are working are also poor). Indeed all things are possible, not only robots but economic systems that guarantee above poverty participation in the economy. btw, is Biden a "Marxist"? (I don't think he "leaves God out of the picture"..)

The 2nd sentence is correct, the first is confused; Trump said (re inner-city black ghettos): "You are living in poverty, your neighborhoods are like war zones, your schools and hospitals are broken...".

No, what should burn like a hot iron in the hearts of every American is Trump's statement above. My interest in China is their model for an economy that actually eradicates poverty. Meanwhile you feel a need to arm yourself with military grade weapons, to protect yourself from.... your own "freedom loving" neighbors, who if not actual criminals, might have a different view of "the common welfare"....

Madness.

 

In fact you are suffering under an obsolete , inadequate neoliberal economic orthodoxy.

And mainstream economists (to whom you are beholden) are beginning to tie themselves up in knots, as they confront massive government deficts, low inflation and near zero interest rates, ever since the GFC...

(link)

The past keeps catching up with the mainstream – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory (economicoutlook.net)

 

While it almost embarrasses me for you, to need to point out this fact, my meandering post was simply an addressing of the random-- and all untied to the main issue of reparations, as I, multiple times, noted-- points in your post. Likewise, if my pointing out statements of yours as being racist, as you allege, is, "all (I) have," it would be because that is all you offered up. That is called logic, if you are unfamiliar.

Please cite my specific reference which you would describe as unfair, non-factual, or strictly an ad hominem attack. I only recall poking a little fun at your having pointed out to me, that something in my prior post did not strictly conform with your reading of the thread's topic, in a post of yours in which nothing you wrote was on-topic.

There are many things about your statements, above, which are wrong and worthy of criticizing. I will limit myself, for now, with your ironic mischaracterization of your second link.
<BEGIN SNIP>

The fundamental law of sociology
... the law is first about to be articulated. It is a difficult task that we undertake, though in fact it is undemanding and straightforward. It is difficult because those who will welcome our results eagerly are among the most perfidious of our species, while those who reject them will do so out of antipathy not discernment. Sandwiched between the devil and the fuzzy-minded are the learned and sagacious readers of La Griffe du Lion, to whom we address our remarks.

The fundamental law of sociology is a summary of hundreds of observations. It asserts that:

On large-scale tests of reasoning ability, the observed mean difference between non-Hispanic whites and African Americans is 1.1 + 0.2 standard deviation.

The observation is so unerringly reproducible, it justly earns the appellation, law. Appropriately, we call 1.1 SD the fundamental constant of sociology. Table 1 illustrates."
<END SNIP>

Here, there is a table, that my copy reproduced just as one long line of information, w/o the spacing &, if there is some editing trick to fix it, I am not aware of it.

The table shows the black/white mean difference on the MATH portion of the 1998 SAT to have been 0.99, which I take to be expressed in terms of a scale of 100, that is, by percentage (since there is no other explanation given for the unit used in the, "standard deviation"). In other words, there was just under 1% difference between the mean scores for math for all black students vs. all non-Hispanic white students on that test.

As this does not take into consideration, of course, any differences in the general quality of their provided educations, I would argue that this is "proof" of nothing. But, even pushing that aside, I think we have all heard that, also scientifically proven, "boys are better than girls at math." And I would bet, for even scientists to've had no problem repeating this, the difference is a good bit more than 1%.

So I think this really goes to what the author said beforehand, which I emboldened, that the difficult thing about the law of sociology is not explaining it, but that, "those who will welcome our results eagerly are among the most perfidious of our species, while those who reject them will do so out of antipathy not discernment." If he intends that statement to refer to people's reactions to his profession's confirmation of the slight differences on tests of reasoning ability-- 1.1% , plus or minus 0.2 = 0.9 - 1.3%-- between the races, he would then be calling those who, "welcome our results eagerly"-- which seems fair to include you, starcastle, in that number, unless you just happen to be a regular reader of La Griffe du Lion-- "among the most perfidious of our species..." That means, the biggest liars; he would say this, clearly, because those who are eager to hear of differences are largely those most inclined to draw unmerited conclusions from, and exaggerate, their data. This is, in fact, what you seem to be in the act of doing, right now.

But, back to the chart, it shows the b/w mean difference in scores on first attempts to pass the NY State bar exam, from 1985 - 1988, to have been 1.11 (%); the National bar exam, 1st attempts, of every U.S. law student first enrolled in the fall of 1991-- 1.13; 1986, '87, & '88 National Medical Examiners exam, part 1-- 1.19; and Armed Forces Qualifications Test (from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth)-- 1.21.

These results do NOT AT ALL paint there as being any SIGNIFICANT difference in overall intelligence, at least until they get into the perfidious hands of those who are so eager to receive word that sociologists have discovered ANY DIFFERENCE, whatsoever.

I will resume quoting your article, here:

The anomaly
There being no more reliable indicator of racial cognitive differences than the standardized math exam, we were surprised recently by a puzzling anomaly -- an apparent violation of the fundamental law...The irregularity turned up on Maryland's usually reliable standardized 8th grade math test, part of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP).

Like many standardized-exam programs, MSPAP is a huge repository of cognitive information waiting to be extracted. Each May, all Maryland public school 3rd, 5th and 8th graders take these tests. Results are reported in exceptional detail, fully disaggregated by race and ethnicity, and reported down to the level of individual school.

While browsing MSPAP pass rates looking for patterns, we happened upon something extraordinary -- a black-white math gap of 0.55 SD, HALF THAT PREDICTED by the fundamental law...Almost seven-thousand Baltimore 8th graders contributed to this result, a sample too big to write off as a statistical aberration...we went back and looked at results from each of the last nine administrations of this test (1993 to 2001). Over nine years we found an average gap of 0.61 + 0.07 SD. The anomaly was confirmed! We had found a reproducible violation of the fundamental law.

The irregularity was confined to Baltimore. Statewide, the gap on the same test over nine years was a remarkably constant 1.11 + 0.05 SD, in perfect accord with the fundamental law. What had Baltimore done to so reduce the racial gap? It was not education reform or inspired pedagogy that cut the gap. It was DEMOGRAPHY.

<END SNIP>

This means that, in citing an article you felt buttressed your case that blacks' low intelligence should be a concern, if they were ever given reparations checks, you actually directed us to an article showing how big a role DEMOGRAPHICS plays in how a person performs on these tests, which have been used to show a racial difference in reasoning ability, that some people, have tried to use as proof of an INTRINSIC difference in intelligence. Actually, your article indicates that at least half of that difference is a direct result of things like the neighborhood in which a person lives, or one's family's income!

To cut to the chase, if you were to follow the implications of your own argument, it might be a good idea if, from now on, you let your wife handle all your finances.

 

Another 500 page post. Mean difference? What a load of garbage.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-f...h-scores-mirror-and-maintain-racial-inequity/

Average scores on the SAT math portion.

Asians 632
Whites 547
Hispanics 478
Black 454

National average 523. Benchmark for college-readiness 530.

Article is by Brookings I do not administer the SAT.

Fundamental law of sociology is to say that these tests are racist even though democrats compile them and Asians always do better than whites. Using bullcrap terms like "mean difference" does not help kids understand basic arithmetic.

Referring to a previous link from me there are 13 schools in the city of Baltimore where not one kid(Not even one!) can do math at grade level.

Hand those people a check for $30,000 and see what they can do with it. I want to see it because nothing will change and the liars will never stop calling our country racist and unfair.

 

Either or polls are useless. Life is not 'black or white'. And speaking of black or white, ie, race, it should not be related to economic outcomes.

The question should be: do you think provision of an above poverty job for all who wants one is a good idea.
(link)

tcherneva the case for a job guarantee - Bing

 

It's from YOUR cited source to, supposedly, back up YOUR argument. To do the math for you, that means you are calling YOUR OWN CITED SOURCE, a, "LOAD OF GARBAGE." What should we take, from that, to imply about your argument, or even about your competence in making this argument?

 

Speaking of Baltimore: its highest population was reached in 1950, c.950,000.....cf, c 570,000 today.
Such demographic changes caused by economic decline happen to negatively impact blacks in particular, who are not as able to escape such economic decline scenarios like many of their white neighbors can (because of employment discrimination and, eg, lower home-ownership/personal wealth.

And poverty is not a good environment for learning, as Trump so memorably observed: "You are living in poverty, your neighborhoods are like war zones, your schools and hospitals are broken..."

 

Nor does it, apparently, help you to understand what, "mean difference," means. Hint: it does not mean, "tests are racist."

 

Some people are better able to adapt to their environment. People moved out of Baltimore because it is a crime ridden hell hole. It is a crime ridden hell hole because of the people who live there.

 

From that same link...

 

I guarantee you that if a study showed that the average Trump voter in Appalachia had an average IQ of 76 these libos would be all over it calling them retarded deplorables. If there were towns or neighborhoods where the murder rate was over 100 per 100,000 population they would relish that. See they would say these people are stupid and violent!