This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?
Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
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Let’s say that 5 generations ago, your great-great-great grandfather had a farm. It was highly productive and had a great location.
Let’s say that my great-great-great grandfather went to the local government and paid bribes and maybe did some light killing and stole that farm. No matter who your g-g-g grandfather talked to, they all pointed to the new deed and told him to suck eggs. Your g-g-g grandfather fell into despair and poverty. His children grew up poor but also worked hard and climbed up the wealth ladder a little. So too did their children, and so on, until your generation. Let’s say you’re lower middle class or so. No generational wealth to speak of but not in poverty.
Meanwhile my family has developed that farmland, partitioned it and sold or leased pieces of it for business and industry. We have phenomenal generational wealth all built on that initial theft of land.
But hey, you never had land stolen directly from you, and I never directly stole the land. Everyone in the area knows exactly what happened. Everyone in the area knows that my generational wealth is built on theft. Nowadays everyone talks openly about it, including me.
Now, from the outside looking in, I say that the absolutely morally right thing to do is restore the ownership of the land to the descendants of the person who owned it. But from the inside, the living descendants of the thief say hey, WE didn’t steal the land. We just benefit every day from the original theft. Why should we do anything to make amends for that theft, which we don’t dispute but don’t want to be accountable for either.
This is a fact of life for all people around the world. I promise you’ll go circles paying retribution if you look for these links of “who stole what”.
I’m a white guy in the Northeast US. My family came from Canada in the early 20th century. None of my grandparents ever owned land. They all were either homemakers or menial laborers. My family didn’t own anything until the 70s. Should I pay reparations?
No, you should not pay reparations.
The government that was responsible should, though. It’s its own, independent entity.
No one is asking to deduct a reparations payment from your paycheck. It’s merely a line item in the existing budget. Sheesh.
They’re still his taxes that he paid. But it’s still a better use than bombs.
This is a good analogy for the reparation argument, nice work.
Only partially. Those two gggf’s had their spat; I’m the descendent of neither, yet it’s me who has to pay the bill.
So, American here. My family immigrated from Germany, Poland, England, and Italy (the nationalities of my four grandparents). My family never owned slaves, never owned farmland, never profited from any of that. Why should my tax dollars go towards paying reparations for something my family had no part in?
That’s the part that I struggle with. Should the families who directly profited off of slavery pay reparations? Perhaps. Should the families and individuals who had nothing to do with slavery? Absolutely not.
Why should my tax dollars go towards paying reparations for something my family had no part in?
Nobody is suggesting that your taxes should increase to exactly match the amount you’d have to personally pay. It’s the responsibility of the government to do it, and while the government does ultimately use your tax dollars it’s not like you’ll personally feel the effect.
Except you would feel the effects. The government would end up with less money for services so worse roads, hospitals, schools etc and probably higher taxes
Good news - your government will spend as little as it can possibly get away with on those things whether you pay slavery reparations or not!
This always seems such a strange argument to me, as if governments are just screaming to spend money on roads, hospitals etc. They spend it on pet projects and tax cuts for their voterbase.
Well, if we’re talking about ideal spending of tax dollars, this isn’t acceptable either. Any way we split it, the government will not spend our money the way we see fit, so it’s still a valid argument to me.
Of course they are, roads, hospitals, railways etc are vote buying. Doesn’t mean they are doing it out of a sense of civic duty because they are generally scum. But if you think that 14 trillion in reparations (450k per tax payer!) Isn’t going to have a massive impact on future spending then I have a bridge for sale!
It depends on the period of time they’re paid over, doesn’t it? Generational debts like these are repaid over, well, generations. It’s not going to be something we notice, and the UK aren’t the only country involved.
Plus, if that’s what you think, I don’t think you can have seen the state of the UK’s roads, hospitals and railways.
I use them daily so imagine how much worse they would be with generational debt.
It would be used as an excuse to privatise every thing left :( I really can’t understand how it wouldn’t affect the average person. You can’t just hand wave away the impact of a very large amount increased debt. Ironically the people that would have had the least amount ‘benefit’ from the slave trade would be the ones that feel the most impact from any reparations. Social programs would be the first ones hit
The hospitals, schools, libraries, roads and services were built with the aid of the disputed money in the first place.
Okay, and how about the millions of other people whose ancestors never did or had any of that? Of the families that benefitted, some of them are still rich and powerful, those are the ones that should be looked at, not some Joe Blow whose lineage has always been lower/middle-class, working for a living like everyone else.
I mean, if you agree that descendants of people who benefitted from enslaving others owe the descendants of those enslaved people compensation of some sort, then I think we agree. The remaining questions are how to identify members of each group and how to accomplish the transfers. That’s law and policy. Not simple, but achievable.
not some Joe Blow whose lineage has always been lower/middle-class, working for a living like everyone else.
The corresponding Joe Blow from the group that got screwed over is going to be comparatively much worse off. Right? Or you can look at it from the other angle: if normal Joe Blow had ancestors who benefited from seriously screwing over people but made bad decisions, squandered their wealth and advantages so Joe Blow is just a Joe Blow then how much worse off would Joe Blow be? Possibly quite a bit.
But anyway, looking at it from the perspective of ancestors, who screwed over who, who’s responsible for what is overcomplicating things. Are there people who are suffering from unfair disadvantages, are their people who are enjoying unfair advantages at the expense of others? If you’re a decent person, that status quo shouldn’t be acceptable: it’s something that needs to be fixed. Maybe through reparations, maybe through affirmative action, maybe through some other approach. We should determine what the most effective use of resources is and do it.
I do genealogy and so I know that my g-g-g-grandfather had to give up farm labouring during the first decades of the British Empire and move to the Bermondsey slums, where he worked as a tanner. If you know anything about historical tanning, you know that this sucked. He was screwed over by the infiux of cheap food from the Empire and our family is part of the underclass to this day.
The thing is, we still live in a rich country because of that. My parents and grandparents and their parents did. We’ve still had access to education and free healthcare and all that shit. We still had access to all that cheap shit that we robbed the rest of the world for.
So yeah, we owe those people’s descendents like it or not. Plus, considering that yes, we were repaying the descendants of slaveowners until just a few years ago, and paying off our Marshall Plan debts etc until very recently, I’m not too fussed if the government of my country pays its debts.
Reparations are just getting the proletariat to cover the bourgeoisie’s bills, as usual. If you really want to make things right, you should trace capital ownership to those currently actually profiting from slavery.
This is a decent analogy, but ignores the practicality of the situation.
How exactly do you get the UK electorate to support this, there really isn’t any benefit to them, it’s just like throwing money into a bonfire. Besides it’s not like the UK economy is currently doing that well, and given that, it’s unrealistic for anyone to support the government just taking more money away intentionally. You’re basically begging for a far-right populist to come in just because they say this is a terrible idea, which is in and of itself the primary reason why it’s a terrible idea.
Slavery ended a while ago, but in the US there is still people alive today who suffered through the Jim Crow laws, and there is still a lot of systematic racism. So, racism didnt end with slavery.
For what I understand about reparations, it is for compensating the black communities, because rich white people has many generations of wealth, meanwhile black people only until a few decades ago were legality unable to make it bigger, being confined to poor communities, and being discriminated agaisnt in every aspect of a white dominated society.
Basically black people had so many obstacules for progress until kinda recently, and reparation are a way to level the ground. Reparations would allow more black people to go to college, feed their families, and get out of extreme poverty.
Then why not just put more money towards poor communities regardless of race?
But a windfall would also help poor Native, White, Latino, Asian, immigrant, felons, or anyone else at a disadvantage.
Yeah. Thats a good thing.
Some countries ended slavery by buying off the slave-owners — paying them for the property that they were being deprived of.
It’s kinda weird that they didn’t pay the enslaved people, who had been deprived of their own work and work-product and life and freedom.
As an American whose ancestors came from Europe around the same time that slavery was abolished here, I can be sure that none of my ancestors benefited directly from slavery; but also that they joined a society that had profited immensely from slavery. The whole reparations concept is complicated.
I mean if they didn’t buy the slaves to set them free, there’d have been a massive war, killing a bunch of the slaves and others, and likely costing more money. Imagine the American civil war but worldwide.
It was a necessary evil.
but also that they joined a society that had profited immensely from slavery.
The same is true for the descendants of slaves. They benefit from the same society that their enslaved ancestors participated in creating. They receive the same benefits of that society that you and your non-slave-owning ancestors receive, so for you, that issue is a wash.
Further, I would say that the descendants of Union soldiers who fought and died during the Civil War are owed at least similar reparations. When the deacendants of slavers get done paying the descendants of slaves, the descendants of slaves can turn around and pay the descendants of abolitionists for their sacrifices.
What of the descendants of the daughter of a former slaver and the son of a freed slave? Wouldn’t they, as descendants of slavers, owe as much in reparations as they are owed as descendants of slaves?
Is “tn” not short for trillion (1,000,000,000,000)?
If that’s the case then the actual number is 569,000 per person.
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I mean that, and also the fact that countries that were plundered for slaves basically lost on a lot of progress due to that, and countries that got slaves were built off of that, basically for free. Sure, it’s not exactly fair to say that the plundered countries would have gotten to where slaver countries are today without that, but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that Europe basically fucked Africa for a century, Africa is worse off for it, Europe is not, and they probably should be giving back not just for their conscience but as what it’s called: reparations.
What I’m trying to get at is that after WWI, Europe (and especially France) decided now-germany did a lot of damage to them, and it wasn’t fair that they could get to bomb your country to hell and not pay to fix it. So Germany had to pay reparations (which was a factor for WWII but we’ll not get into that), as a way of helping those countries build back what they had bombed.
Of course, all the economic rationeles are valid.
They are also not very compelling. If slaver Europe fucked over Africa for a century, should we compensate them only for stolen labor? How about stolen resources? Caused suffering? Lost progress? Lost standing? Lost lives?
How about all the exploitation that has happened since, due to slaver Europe having the upper hand? African labor and resources are still valued lower than in richer countries as local working conditions are still poor and exploitative.
Also, could paying reparations as a lump sum ever measure up to the slow development of infrastructure, knowledge, culture and national pride/trust/stability that comes with building your own wealth?
We have plenty of experience with aid getting stolen by warlords, and grants commonly get lost to corruption, cronies and other misappropriation, even without the warlords.
For the fiscal compensation to make sense, we’re talking orders of magnitude larger sums, and they would have to be given together with labor, knowledge, supportive relations, etc. over decades. And also with much fewer strings than our current economic system allows.
I find that there is no satisfying way to fiscally compensate for a century of exploitation, suffering and oppression, and have found that the sums and arguments are more compelling as an absolution. It’s about the slavers wanting to clear their conscience more than making it right.
It’s not the most noble reason for it, but it seems do do more for that than for the exploited people. Either change what we’re talking about, or face that your reasons are about you, not them.
I am against reparations because it trivializes the immense harm that was done, and makes it seem like it can be made up for with a cash payment, like when someone wrecks your car. I feel the harm was so immense that the guilt can’t properly be bought off in indulgence payments, and any attempt to try will fall short of the goal, while cutting off all further debate in the topic among overly transactional people. After the reparation payment, some people can say “See, racism is over! We paid it off and are debt-free!”
And then we get a situation like exists in much of the US South right now, where the Supreme Court pronounced racism over and ended the Voting Rights act, then State GOP Majorities picked right back up doing a lot of things that the act prohibited.
The debt won’t truly be paid until the descendants of those slaves are truly treated as equals to the descendants of the slave holders. A cash payment simply isn’t enough, we need to improve society. Investing that money into education, and ensuring that regressive policies don’t infest our local education system, is a start.
Reparation payments sound nice sometimes, but I truly think it’s just a distraction designed to promote infighting among the economically enslaved. Tax the rich, provide for all in need, and we will have made more of a repair than payment ever could.
I don’t know exactly how to answer you, but the effects of colonization and slavery are still felt today in many former colonies. For instance, a lot of countries were created on a map with a pencil and a ruler without any regards for ethnic groups or culture, which is why there are so many straight lined borders all around the world, this created instabilities and conflicts within the countries. Many of them were also decolonized, pretty much overnight (the colonizers left, without organising elections or handing over the country to newly formed local authorities), which left them completely disorganised. I don’t have an opinion specifically on reparation, but colonization and slavery left durable scars in countless countries around the world, and they are still felt to this day, with very little chance of ever healing.
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Putting aside the fact that slavery is still legal in the US thanks to the 13th amendment, and the fact that US orgs are outsourcing it to developing countries, the long-term effects and inequity of slavery continue to this day and should be addressed.
That said, I’m of the opinion we shouldn’t give cash payouts - while it’ll provide benefit to the community, it’ll be spent in such a way that the benefits will flow out of the community almost immediately. It also gets into mucky territory judging how affected people were, and will be the basis for the stoking of massive racial animosity.
Instead, I think we should use the funds to invest massively in infrastructure and programs that will provide long-term benefits to the community. Transport, education, social services and the like that will all help maximise people’s quality of life, opportunities, social mobility, and enfranchisement. If some low-income families that weren’t affected by slavery benefit too, all the better.
If you are genuinely curious, theres a collection of articles published by the Atlantic. It deals with the US but seems relevant to your question.
Thanks,I’ll take a look. I had the same question, plus none of my ancestors were in the US when this happened and I have no idea what participation the country we came from may have had. At the risk of sounding like “all lives matter”, is it not our ethical duty to fight inequity, injustice, any loss of human rights? Slavery and all that went within it might be one of the causes, but what people today are affected by is inequity and injustice.
It effects tons of people, yourself included, in ways you have apparently never stopped to consider. I don’t say this to be shitty, but I’ll be direct about it.
Your ancestors came here, as a privileged class, and built generation wealth in their family because others were denied it. Go ahead and accept that. It doesn’t make you a shitty person, mine did too, mine never amounted to anything but poor, white trash, but even they had benefits from becoming established in this country, at that time. So did yours.
The government hugely benefited from it and should be held responsible for that. Taxes come from us, the circle continues.
If you’re going to take issue with it, and not be a shitty person, realistically we can’t pay enough to replace what was denied them. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find some nominal amount, but your right, we should also look for ways to try and fix what we can’t be replaced.
Your ancestors came here, as a privileged class
According to family legend, the first to immigrate was fleeing wars around the time of Bismarck. He arrived in new York as a teenager: penniless, illiterate, and not knowing anyone. He worked for years as a farm laborer before being able to buy his own land and bring over his family
First of all, anything that starts “according to legend” is typically not presented as fact.
More importantly though, your family arrived here white, after systems influenced by white supremacy had established a privileged system in their favor. He arrived with absolutely nothing, and in one generation he was able to afford to buy land and move his family here after him. Do you know why he was able to do that? I’ll give you a hint, people of color couldn’t. What your family were allowed to do as immigrants, was possible because people who came from families of slaves were not allowed to.
I told you the first time, my family was poor white trash too, amd we benefited from it. So did yours.
Kind of telling that you didn’t want to respond to anything else I said, just try to prove that you’re family had it worse.
At that point we should still be funding development in those nations, like for infrastructure and education, etc
I was thinking the same thing in my country. My grandparents immigrated. They had more to do with the French Revolution than the slave trade.
So, can the Slavic countries claim payments of reparations from the formerly known ottoman empire? Perhaps Jewish people from Asia? Surely the Christians from the Arabs, and the Arabs from the Christians? Not to mention Vietnam from China, or entire Europe from the decendants of the Roman empire.
Or are all of those instances somehow different?
History is full of misery and trying to pay to make amends for somebody else’s actions, today, feels ridiculous. Just as OP, I don’t get it.
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You’re in a community called ‘no stupid questions’ and your response to a question is ‘what a stupid question’? Good work
I can’t wait for my cheques from Scandinavian countries for the Viking invasions, Italy for the Roman occupation, France for the Normandy conquerers, etc!
Also your caveman ancestor punched my caveman ancestor so I’m expecting a payment from you too
Slaveholders got to build wealth off the free labor of slaves. When they died, that wealth didn’t disappear. It was passed down to the next generation. The descendants of slave holders are better off financially than the descendants of slaves because of that accumulated wealth. The descendants of slave holders should pay back the wealth they now own to the people it was stolen from.
EDIT: I knew this would trigger white people.
There was substantial indentured labour and serfdom in England too. Surely simple redistributive tax based on wealth is fairer?
Anyway how do you determine whos ancestors had slaves, or weren’t involved, or were slaves? You want to start tracing bloodlines?! Should the English pay the Irish?
You’re welcome to look at my bank statements. If you can find £569,000 that I can pay someone without going bankrupt then I’d be most surprised.
Lmao as if I am seeing any of that wealth.
But tax-based reparations will mostly be paid out from normal proletariat with little to no capital ownership.
Which is just because not only those that profited from slavery paid taxes on those profits which improved the lives of all those who lived under the same state, they also individually used those profits in philanthropic projects (schools, hospitals, poor houses) that have benefited the public as well. On top of all these, just the injection of wealth that stemmed from slavery and other exploitative practices into the economies of these countries that practiced them had a positive effect on the growth of those economies the benefits of which (lower unemployment, higher incomes etc.) being reaped by the general public.
All of these have a compounding effect that positively affects the lives of the people living in that place (wherever that is) in the current times so even though they don’t own slaves now or their ancestors have never been part of the slave trade it is fair that they should be a part of paying reparations.
Party A is enslaved by party B. Party B dies and leaves his wealth to party C, who dies and leaves his wealth to … party F. Party A dies and leaves his lack of wealth to … party K. Party F uses the empire built off of his wealth to sell things to party K and some random other party L. Is party L responsible for compensating party K for party B’s exploitation of party A?
Aka tax the rich, were all slaves on a spectrum
Your number is a bit off. It’s more around 569000 per person.
Who downvoted this? It’s correct.
£18.8 trillion divided by 67.7 million people is £278,000 per person.
That’s just not possible as a sum. 18.8 trillion is more money than the entire nation has. I’m all for reparations btw. But I can’t see how that much is realistic?
I thought 500 quid seemed a bit light to be mending generational wealth accumulation.
This seems much more in line with what I would expect.
Note, I’m a statistician, but don’t do maths outside of 9-5 /s
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Correct. I put too few 0’s in. I have no chance of paying anyone half a million. Those aren’t reparations, that’s a kind of reverse slavery. Also I divided by the number of taxpayers (31.6m), not the total population, because it’s going to be the taxpayer muggins who has to foot the bill.
18,000,000,000,000/31,600,000 = 569,620
Don’t want to be that guy, but it definitely changes the picture somewhat.
