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Of course not. Moreover, it would go against both the liberal (bottom up) and the conservative (top down) economic paradigms for growth.
ReplyDeleteSome blacks are among the wealthy (my brother in two years) and some are comfortably in the middle class (me), while some whites are impoverished (my roommate's family, Eminem's mom, etc.). What would be the logic in it?
Liberals may want to "spread the wealth around," but they don't want to do it blindly, haphazardly. What comes to my mind is one of those glass snow globes that you shake up to excite the snow in a little Christmas landscape. Reparations in a stimulus context would almost mean shaking the snow from one place to another (the snow in this case standing for money), and hoping for the best.
I disagree. If you look at the goals of a stimulus, it is trying to stimulate aggregate demand. How is a secondary concern. The current American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and past measures like The New Deal all use government expenditures to increase aggregate demand. Roads cost money and if you need to build a lot of them then you have to hire workers and pay them. The effect is (hopefully) an increase in aggregate demand as businesses and workers spend the money. Conservatives prefer using tax cuts because that allows the individual to decide what to do with the money they keep. The added benefit is reducing the role of the government. There is some evince to suggest that individuals simply save any additional income that comes their way as a hedge against future tax increases in a long term deficit situation. Even in that case, banks and investment banks see an inflow of cash to savings and investment accounts. They turn around and loan that money out, helping small businesses and what-not.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of reparations for slavery for two reasons: 1, it is controversial and would be fun to argue in favor of from a purely economic standpoint. At the very least, it would piss people off. 2, it accomplishes the goal of stimulating aggregate demand. African-Americans as a group have less debt than other ethnic groups because banks (even with the CRA and all that stuff) don't like to loan to poorer people, marginally employed people, or uneducated people of whom most are black. So the money for reparations would be put right back into the economy. 3, (yes, a bonus reason) low income communities would benefit greatly from a large influx of cash and investment. It could be just the push needed to bring enough of the population out of poverty and begin serious urban renewal.