Am I reading it right? 5 million to each Black resident?

This sounds so ridiculous that I don't even know how to comment. Does the Federal government even have that much money (I know the Fed can print) to give that kind of money?

Reparations often sound difficult to comprehend.

There are reparations and there is stupidity. 5M USD to each is stupidity.

Can you walk me through your thought process why this amount is too high? What would a proper amount look like?

Given that the article says the Federal government should do it, let's assume it is for each eligible recipient in the USA (since the Federal government obviously can't hand out massive cash to a small geographic area).

As per https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/03/25/the-gro..., "46.8 million people in the U.S. identified their race as Black". Taking 5M for each, you get 234T USD.

Where is that money going to come from?

> What would a proper amount look like?

A proper amount would have to be mathematically feasible to not be ridiculous. The policy implications of any such feasible plan are nuanced and might or might not make sense. 234T USD does not make sense though.

> Taking 5M for each, you get $234T USD.

Yep, it sure sounds like a lot. Maybe a bit too high, but I'll note your argument was that its too much, not that it is an injustice to others.

I wonder how much of the $145T total wealth[0] in the US, or $463T in the world, would be owned by the 46.8 million people in event that their ancestors hadn't been enslaved, had their culture and homes forcibly removed or destroyed, or lost generations of social configuration through slavery, disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow.

Pretty large moral quandary, knowing most Americans (and, to be fair, most people in the world) have their wealth and security built not by their personal ingenuity but by the exploitation of the labor of others. Maybe not quite as distressful as confronting the Absurd, but still pretty big.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wea...

My argument was that it is mathematically infeasible, so it is irrelevant to argue about whether it is fair or not. As I noted a feasible policy might or might not make sense depending on many other factors.

I would be very interested to know why did you find the 5M number reasonable. Did you think it was feasible? Since you include the World wealth in your argument above, do you think some kind of wealth transfer from the whole world to the 46.8 million people is a sensible option? Why?

If you read my prior comments, you'll note I don't argue for the 5M. I have no idea what proper reparations would be because I have no counterfactual baseline for comparison nor specific moral model that provides a clear estimate. Indeed, this is why I wonder how much of the cumulative wealth would be a just transfer.

My comments on US and total wealth were generally noting that wealth is typically built by exploitation, either of someone's labor or of resources they or their progenitors took by force.

That doesn't make them a good idea