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.)
The problem I have with this viewpoint is this.
Where does it start and where does it end?
World history is full of atrocities, crimes, war etc.
Additionally, many of the things which we now consider atrocity or crime might not even have been one in the past.
Fabricating such artificial claims is the same as Putin is doing by using the history book for creating claims on Ucraine.
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we go as for back as needed to achieve a somewhat just society.
Let’s take your example of the Jews in Egypt (other than the fact that the source for Jewish slavery in Egypt is just religious texts without any archeological evidence ever found): is there some great opportunity divide between an Egyptian and an Israeli? no, so we obviously don’t need to worry about that.
or for the Ottoman-Slavic question: do Slavic peoples have less opportunity than those of modern day Turkey? no, so we don’t need to worry about that.
and yes, Italians (and many other parts of Europe) do send different types of aid to Africa for these reasons
Do Black people in the USA have massive opportunity differences in comparison to the WASP population? yes, they do, thus it is right to conduct these reparations. You may not be the only people to have committed slavery, but you sure still wear it proudly, and you are still a deeply systemically racist nation.
TLDR: it’s not about revenge, but righting wrongs.
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none of these targets Americans, you can make the exact same arguments for England and their colonial holdings (the thing OP was referring to), to Russia and the rest of the Soviet, or Russia and the rest of Russia, etc…
Even currently in some rich Middle East countries, there are technically slave workers - construction & household to name 2.
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We can do more than one thing at once.
Well considering the last slave (coerced labor) was freed in the 1940s, it’s still extremely recent. These are people’s grandparents and great-grandparents. The velocity of money is very real.
https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=3h8t3bfODPKhULp1
Honestly, it should never stop. There should be wealth, inheritance, and estate taxes that even out advantages and disadvantages over time. Poor people shouldn’t be paying for it because of their race, rich people should because of their advantages.
This is just communism. Distribute wealth until everyone is equal. You don’t even need to bring race into the equation to achieve the same results as being proposed here.
This is not communism.
Communism wouldn’t even have a need for money, so distributing wealth wouldn’t exist.