A California blue-ribbon panel’s recommended statewide “reparations” plan exposes the cynical politics that underlie big-ticket progressive power grabs.
The overall cost? At as much as $1.2 million a person, the final bill could top $800 billion-with-a-B.
That’s more than 2.5 times the state’s annual budget.
Hmm: California banned slavery in 1849, the year before becoming a state, when its population was below 100,000 and the Census counted fewer than 1,000 blacks.
That surely wrecks the main grounds for paying any reparations at all.
Instead, the plan reaches desperately to put a price on other supposed injustices: more than $13,000 per year spent in the state to remediate alleged “health harms” suffered by black Californians; over $2,300 a year for what the left deems discrimination in prison sentences.
It also features racist pseudoscience, like requiring a special agency to do genealogical research to determine eligibility — a hideous return of the “one drop” rule.
Perhaps its dodgiest assumption is the concept that 100% of all disparities in socioeconomic status are due to racism.
Meanwhile, the cost for this would be shouldered by everyone in the state.
Why should a Chinese-American small business owner in Los Angeles pay reparations for wrongs neither she nor her ancestors ever committed?
Especially when her ancestors were also legally discriminated against.
Will Cali’s millions of undocumented immigrants have to pitch in?
In all, paying the huge cost would amount to a massive regressive tax, hurting the less affluent the most — and the state’s poor are 13.5% Hispanic and 11.8% Asian.
Meanwhile, California faces a $22.5 billion — and growing! — budget deficit.
It can’t even pay for its current level of services, let alone these pie-in-the-sky handouts.
And the state’s population’s is shrinking for the first time ever, thanks to high taxes and the insane cost of living.
So, the plan’s racism and dubious constitutionality aside, it’s yet another example of how progressives love to score ideological points even at the expense of the most vulnerable.
That the insanity is a distraction from the crises created by other lefty policies is just an added benefit.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
