(RepublicanJournal.org) – Many Americans are puzzled by the fact the Democratic Party, which has been in and out of government for 196 years, still can’t seem to run the US economy. Every so often, though, a Democrat will remind us of why –- it’s because they don’t understand economics at all. In the latest example, a Democrat congresswoman has shown the country she doesn’t even understand something as basic as taxation.
Congresswoman Has Bizarre Plan for “Reparations”
On April 9, the “Black Lawyers Podcast” released a new episode featuring an interview with Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). During her conversation with host J Carter, Crockett discussed a range of issues that affect black Americans — and one of those issues was so-called “reparations” for slavery. This is a controversial issue, with activists and some liberal politicians demanding that white taxpayers hand over huge sums of money to black Americans as some kind of atonement for things done hundreds of years ago.
Crockett at least seems to have grasped the idea that actually taking money from people who never owned slaves and giving it to people who never were slaves isn’t going to be universally popular. However, she hasn’t managed to work out that “reparations” for long-ago events are just a bad idea. Instead, she borrowed an idea suggested by a celebrity.
Unfortunately, Crockett can’t remember which celebrity made the suggestion, but she thinks it’s “not necessarily a bad idea.” The idea she likes is that black people should “not have to pay taxes for a certain amount of time.” According to Crockett, “that puts money back in your pocket.”
It’s certainly true that, if you don’t pay taxes, you have more money in your pocket. The thing is, it’s your own money. The people who’re leading the call for reparations are unlikely to be happy at just being allowed to keep money that belonged to them in the first place. Crockett also dimly realizes that there could be a significant problem with the plan; some black people, who she thinks should get reparations, aren’t even paying taxes and wouldn’t benefit at all.
There are other problems with Crockett’s plan. For example, about 13% of Americans are black. Exempting 13% of the population from paying taxes is going to leave a huge hole in the government’s budget, and fixing that means either cutting spending, piling more debt on future generations, or hitting non-black Americans with a significant tax hike. Are people who don’t like the idea of paying “reparations” directly going to be any happier about paying a lot more tax? It seems unlikely.
Then of course there’s the basic argument against any form of “reparations.” The US still has problems with race relations, but things are better now than they’ve ever been. However, if Democrats start forcing white Americans to pay for things done by other people long ago, that’s likely to cause a lot of resentment. Is this really the direction we want to be going?
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