David Henderson and Charley Hooper identify “the surprising beneficiaries of American slavery.” A slice:
The [California Reparations] task force determined that most of the amount it claims are owed to black Californians, $966,918, is due to a lower life expectancy. But the task force mistakenly compared black Californians to white non-Hispanic Californians. The proper comparison is with black Africans, where life expectancies are about ten years lower. Using the task force’s assumptions, the figure would be $1.23 million, but in favor of black Californians.
All told, the value to the descendants of slaves of being born in America is well over one million dollars. It’s as if every black American won the lottery. The task force wants Californian taxpayers to pay them even more.
Slavery was odious. Today’s black Americans are not slaves, but are the indisputable, albeit unintended, beneficiaries of the slave trade and are due no financial settlement.
Let’s hope that George Will is correct that Trump and DeSantis will so neuter the other that some other candidate wins the 2024 GOP nomination for the presidency. Here’s his conclusion:
A New Hampshire student, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that followed Trump’s incendiary harangue and disrupted the certifying of electoral votes, asked DeSantis last month whether Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power.” DeSantis’s less-than-courageous answer: “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day.” Good grief. He wasn’t anywhere near Gettysburg in July 1863 and had nothing to do with the moon landing in July 1969, but that does not preclude him from having thoughts about these events.
Political prophesy is optional folly, but: There are not enough Republicans, in Iowa or the nation, enamored of the snarling contest between Trump and DeSantis — their competition to see who can despise the most American defects — to nominate either of them. Which is grim news for President Biden.
And here’s Charles Cooke on George Will’s prophesy.
Joe Lancaster explains that “giving away taxpayer money is not the best way to attract investment.”
Robin Currie interviews Mercatus Center Distinguished Visiting Scholar Alain Bertaud.
Wall Street Journal columnist James Freeman decries yet “another sad story of covid fraud.” A slice:
Back in early 2020, some of us figured that shutting down the economy in a panicked response to Covid probably wasn’t a wise move. Reporting on the latest in a very long series of negative consequences from politicians’ reckless attempt to close society and then simulate prosperity with government spending, Jeanette Settembre reports for the New York Post….
