Two ideas are percolating through the ragged collection of synapses which pass for my brain on most days. Reparations and tariffs and their relationship to our society are the starting points.
According to Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, who accessed government documents to prove it, tRump's trade wars are presently costing the average American family about $1000./year. For most of us, that is a fairly large number. It represents the pass along costs that importers incur when they pay the government tariff on items from China, Mexico, and any other countries the president* is trying to intimidate. It is also far more than most of us got in the GOP tax cut in 2017. However, most of us will just pay up and grumble about inflation.
Now, as a thought experiment, picture a thousand dollar per family charge to finance reparations to the descendants of all the slaves brought to the US in the 17th and 18th centuries. While no one to my knowledge has put a hard dollar figure on the cost of reparations, the idea of monetary compensation for the injustice is gaining traction among liberals and black Americans. Who among us (and I mean all white Americans) would be willing to part with any money to redress a centuries' old injustice.
Yet, here we are, paying for a moron's idea of what trade negotiations should be with nary a peep. The average black American family presently has about 15% of the assets of the average white American family. That this is the product of 400 years of slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation is not debatable. What we as a society can and should do about it is up for discussion. While I consider myself a liberal, I need to hear a cogent argument for reparations before agreeing to the idea. What about the average MAGA hat wearing tRump supporter. I think the whole idea is a hard sell. But it is something we must grapple with as a just society.
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