Re: reparations

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Michael Perelman wrote:
> > Brad, your comment, as usual was clever, but I was aiming at something
> > something else -- that our system is both extractive and exploitative.
>
> Clever? How about racist. ...
>
> Louis Proyect

To make the point that a substantial part of the wealth moved by
"reparations" is moved to people--like Alexis Herman, Thomas Sowell,
Ward  Connerly, Vernon Jordan--who don't especially need it (hell,
it's highly probable that at least one of my ancestors involuntarily
took the middle passage around 1800) is not "racist."

What is your motive for claiming that it is?

Brad DeLong
--

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory
of money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading
guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead.
Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in
tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long
past the ocean is flat again."

--J.M. Keynes
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley;
Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
(510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones
(510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/
<delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>