If we leave out the reparations for physical violence, genocidal stress, inadmissibility to superior social classes, etc., and only take into account the stolen labor, at the today's equivalent minimum wage, then the calculation for the minimum amount due to the descendants of slaves is a simple one, as follows.
This calculation includes only the money due to ancestors and their descendants, in terms of the stolen actual labor counted in person-hours, based on a minimal economic value of that labour, adjusted at a lowest reasonable rate of interest.
Every step in the following calculation will use the lowest possible evaluators, such as to produce a MINIMUM amount due.
In the 70 year period between 1790 and 1860, there were, on average, 2 million slaves at any time in the USA. In the same period the average US population was 14 million.
Moving forward to 2000, the US population was 309 million, with 40 million slave descendants.
To obtain a minimal (under estimated) annual interest rate, we use the population increase from 14 million to 309 million in the 140 years from 1860 to 2000. This gives a population annual growth rate of 2.2%.
Now capital value increase interest rates in the US have been much greater than the population growth rate. Nonetheless, we adopt the underestimate of 2% for the interest rate to be applied to the stolen income value. We further apply the interest rate starting only in 1860, rather than earlier, thereby making our estimate even more of an under estimate.
The value of the stolen labor, for the period 1790 to 1860, at today's US minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is as follows. (Note that using today's minimum wage automatically corrects for valuing the historic currency to its present value.)
70 years (1790 to 1860 period only)X2 million slaves (average number in the period used)X365 days per year (OK, maybe I should exclude one day off per week?)X10 hours of work per day (again a minimum)X$7.25 per hour=$ 3.7 trillion
Next, I apply the 2% interest rate (compounded annually). This gives a multiplicative factor of (1.02)^140 = 16, for the 140 years from 1860 to 2000. Further compounding could be applied to bring us to the present. (Again, this is a minimum estimate.)
Compounding to 2000, therefore, gives:
$ 3.7 trillionX(1.02)^140 (or 16, if you prefer)=$ 59.2 trillion
The latter one-time payment would be easy for the USA to make, since its annual GDP is $15 trillion. (Think of a wealthy person's annual salary relative to buying a house in a safe neighbourhood.) The USA would not even need to sell any assets to achieve this modest payment.
For the 40 million Black slave descendants in the US today, the calculated reparation means that US white society owes each and every Black slave descendant a MINIMUM payment of $ 1.5 million, which is long overdue.
After the minimum payment is made, it would be appropriate to calculate and pay the addition reparations that are due.
My goal here was to show that these calculations are simple and unambiguous. Understanding the calculated minimum allows one to move forward from that established basis, towards a more realistic reparation number. At the very least, each Black slave descendant can legitimately demand $ 1.5 million payable immediately.
An obvious question that arises from this straightforward calculation is: Why are Black leaders not demanding reparation, as a priority demand?
Denis Rancourt is a former physics professor at the University of Ottawa, and is the author of the book "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism". More essays by this author are HERE.
49 comments:
Why doesn't everyone have 1.5 million minimum? Some money must have gone astray for most everyone, right?
Prior to the 2001 attacks in NYC and elsewhere, reparations was on the national political agenda.
But there were white slaves too, and Indian and Chinese etc, etc....
Why would anyone WANT reparations? Shouldn't they rather to use the freedom they enjoy living in this country to make it on their own? This only fosters an unhealthy entitlement culture.
Yup, the same minimal reparation calculation can be applied to any group or individual (and their descendants) whose labor has been stolen by not paying a fair value for the labor, under circumstances where the "value" is determined by the powerful buyer of the labor rather than via a just negotiation on a level negotiating field.
My calculation is a valid calculation within the logic of labor as a sold commodity, and ownership, and the legal right to transfer earned resources to one's descendants.
If, within a democratic nation state, one accepts these notions of a fair price, non-oppressive negotiations, ownership of earned goods, and inheritance, then one must accept the principle of reparation for stolen labor.
But we remain far from the reparations due for the impacts of stolen land, genocide, murder, torture, and stolen dignity, personality, health, and humanity.
Indeed, the minimal reparation calculation based only on stolen labor must be seen as a necessary and immediate preliminary step which follows from the very principles of a lawful democratic state, or else the state loses its legitimacy entirely, based on its own criteria.
Either the "democratic" state corrects for labor theft, or it must be understood as an instrument of labor theft. The state cannot be neutral with such gross systemic theft. It is either a system of justice or it is a system of criminality. Let's be clear.
"Anonymous said...Why would anyone WANT reparations? Shouldn't they rather to use the freedom they enjoy living in this country to make it on their own? This only fosters an unhealthy entitlement culture."
Entitlement? One is entitled to not be robbed. One is not entitled to rob. To want and fight for reparation is to want and fight for justice, for one and all. To not fight for reparation is to condone the self-proclaimed entitlement of the robbers, and to condone their crimes. I stole from you but you are now free to earn some of it back, following my rules...? Sound familiar?
Not gonna happen. Wishful thinking.
By the way, the Roman Empire owe me and almost every white descendant of Roman slaves several trillion dollars in total reparation money.
Until that could happen, reparation for the black descendants of the slaves ain't gonna happen. The blacks should sue Muslim Arabs and black Africans for their ancestors enslaving and forcing black Africans to slavery in the 15th to 19th centuries. Don't ignore that ugly facts of history.
Good day.
I believe some reparations are in order but to who and how they are to be paid is the big dilemma. Those receiving reparations of course should not pay taxes to fund this which leaves some 250 million Americans left to pay for it. According to my rough calculations in my head that would mean taxpayers paying several hundred thousand dollars apiece to fund this. To do that would mean making these reparations paying Americans destitute. We would be creating another group of poor people and I have to ask if that is fair too. Maybe it is but we then have another problem. There are no easy answer to this.
While it might be true that they are 'owed' the lost wages, there is a moral dilemma in expecting to force someone who did not steal or conscript the labor to pay money to someone who is not the person from whom that service was extracted....in other words you cannot inherit a 'moral debt', if we were to do so I suspect there would be an infinite regression to the beginning of time.
@Bob, Bill, Vyse:
Come on now. Historic reparation is not that difficult to conceive, or to implement.
Nobody said anything about making ordinary taxpayers poor.
Indeed, 40 million more millionaires in the USA would be a remarkable boost for the domestic economy, far greater than any bank bailout.
Think of it as the state making a modest long term investment, well within its means.
Think of it as increasing the middle class.
Think of it as required, not optional. The right thing.
Now if the state is controlled by a few who would use such a project to make another sector poor, and their friends and bosses more rich, then that also would require some reparation...
The point is, reparation is due AND ordinary white folks have also been cheated. All colors of regular citizens who have always had their labor devalued by the bosses can fight for reparations. A most obvious place to start is slave descendants, but all these battles for justice can be worked at the same time, and strengthen each other rather than harm each other.
In the words of Malcolm X "We have a common enemy". The face of that enemy is constantly changing but it remains the common enemy.
This has got to be the most stupid thing I've read in a long time.
Is Africa supposed to pick up any of this tab? Africa is the home to slavery and when Europeans wanted to buy slaves they went to Africa and bought slaves from Africans. Africa has a 5000+ year history of slavery that still continues today. I guess the old saying what goes around comes around and the slaves that Europeans bought found that out.
No.
complete crap... its this type of thinking that contributes to our culture of entitlement. you sir, are a moron.
First, whether or not this debt is ever satisfied is NOT the question. The point is that the economic behemoth that the USA is would not have been possible without this systemically stolen labor. Rome and other points to the ancient world are totally irrelevant. Thank you for the calculation. It is a starting point for discussion on a mumber of things, not the least being remuneration on these shores in this country in recent enough times. Then the issue of other peoples' stolen labor, it is true enough. Let them find voice to articulate their concerns. Try to stay focused on one item at a time; that's complicated enough.
I think we need to find every ex-slave we can and pay them the money they so rightfully deserve. I think we also should find every white man who gave his life on the American battlefield and pay him $2,000,000 for the sacrifice he made so other men could live free.
if we can't find any of these people then we provide every black person, who wishes to return to their homeland, a one way ticket, a bagged lunch and a few bucks for taxi fairs.
while we're at it let's give the author one too.
For comparison, the current annual US spending on military/defense related costs is over $1 trillion.
And the estimated total monetary costs to 2011 of the Iraq and Afghanistan US wars is $4 trillion, which is approximately the minimum value of the stolen slave labor prior to interest payments to slave descendants.
@Matthew Smith: yes, a PhD physicist is a moron. That makes total sense #sartalics
I do have one question, Denis: why do you value the slave labour at modern minimum wage, and then apply interest? If there had been a minimum wage in slave-holding times it would have been a lot lower. Surely it makes more sense to either value the labour at minimum wage, or value it at 1800s wages and then apply interest? This would result in an ~$100,000 payout for each black citizen, which wouldn't make them wealthy but would definitely make them comfortable. Maybe I missed something?
As to everyone who thinks reparations are a bad idea: I'm assuming you're all white (so am I). While YOU might not have owned slaves, and maybe not even a single one of your direct ancestors, there's no doubt that the present wealth disparity between blacks and whites has its roots in massive head start given the white population via stolen labour. In other words, like it or not, you, me, and every white person on the planet (not just Turtle Island) are the beneficiaries of slavery. Not all to the same degree to be sure ... but this is something that can be easily dealt with by liquidating the assets of our own exploiter class, rather than robbing the working class (as the exploiters would of course attempt to do).
The world's richest 100 people amassed enough wealth in 2012 alone to end world poverty 4 times over ... in case anyone's curious as to the practicality of reparations.
_http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/19/240-billion-amassed-by-100-richest-people-enough-to-end-extreme-poverty-four-times-over-oxfam/
So presumably those nations who have suffered likewise under various empires (ie Ottoman) should consider claiming even huger amounts? The English could claim reparation in light of the atrocities and slavery at the hands of the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans and many more. Nation by nation claims could be made. We could all claim from the very rich!! and we all know who they are!!!
Incidentally where do the black chiefs enter into these calculations, you know...the ones who hunted down their own people to sell as slaves to the rich whites?
What about the servants and serfs of Englnad and many other countries? The list goes on ad infinitum and yet it seems that in the eyes of some...only black folk and Jewish folk can suffer and bleed. Surely the biggest question of all is why should people living now be held responsible for the behaviour of those who are long dead? It seems that you do not after all believe in fairness.
Then we should also consider reparations from all the blacks who have blocked whites, hispanics and other races from employment. It happens all the time.
@MattS,
You asked about my calculation. There are two steps here.
Step 1:
If you pay a historic minimum wage ("fair" wage) at the historic wage and ask how much that historic wage is valued in today-dollars, so that we can do all the calculations in today-dollars (used to pay things today, whereas the historic wage was used to buy thing back then, but they are the same things, food, clothing, land, luxury items, etc.) then the answer in today-dollars is today's minimum wage, assuming this to be a minimal "fair" wage.
Step 2:
That is the amount expressed in today-dollars but it was stolen from the ancestors of the descendant survivors some 150 years ago. Had the money not been stolen then it would have gained value through natural human investment during 150 years. This is the notion of stolen opportunity regarding accumulation of wealth by one's descendants. It is basic justice that interest must be payed. A rigorous estimate of real valuation in time is the population growth rate. (In the case of the US, for citizens part of the US economy, this population rate value is clearly a minimal interest rate estimate compared to actual wealth growth over 150 years.)
voila.
PS: Regarding your first point: Being a physicist does not demonstrate intelligence! For example: Are Physicists Smart?
@catherine:
You state: "Surely the biggest question of all is why should people living now be held responsible for the behaviour of those who are long dead?"
I don't want to make people living now "responsible" in the sense of imposed sacrifice. In a nutshell: I want the rich bastards to "pay", who control the government and continue to screw everybody over.
And the numbers show that there is plenty of money to pay for reparations if we make THEM behave.
If your reaction is that you are worried about being "responsible" then that tells me that you are use to being screwed over yourself. I say: Fight back, but not against others who are also being screwed over.
Youre a moron, sir, with all due respect. Stealing is bad then huh? How about black ppl pay reparations for all tje SHIT THEY STOLE FROM WHITE PPL since they bacame free? Who is gonna reparate me $40k of equipment they stole from ME?
None of us like government but blacks have stolen alot from white ppl over the years whos gonna reparate that? You might be intelligent in the physics field, but you are really naiive person and never had to do business with blacks. I had $40k of equipment stolen from me whos gonna reparate me for that? Now make us a smarty pants equation(that u obviously pulled out where sun dont shine) calculating all the stuff they stole and also all the welfare money they stole by spendin it in strip clubs and cruises and then well talk about reparations. Just because some numbers mathematicLly add up doesnt mean ANYTHING. you,'s ir, are not as smart as u think and r very closed minded
@Arseniy:
OK, I gather you did not have insurance? Which is fine because insurance companies are mega thieves.
I think that it would only be fair to add your reparation request to the calculation. To add it as a demand coming from you. If you add your demand, it will strengthen the overall demand.
Also, when those Black's get their $1.5 million each, they may be inclined to give you a good deal to buy back your equipment?
Like I said, you are extremely naive. should the government just pay for anything that ever got stolen from anyone? and then again this conversation is totally pointless because the biggest thieves are the government and they will not give you anything only take away. you seem to be living in some kind of a non real lala land. please come down from the sky the world is not all rainbows and it is really evil in really corrupt. even money to a race that steals and kills the most wouldnt help it either. what makes you write an article like this. are you trying to provoke a racial debate? anyways cannot teach old dog new tricks keep thinking that we owe them something we don't owe them anything.
also like I said try to calculate amount the black people stole from white people then we can continue this conversation
No. disparity is because of diff. In intellect. Im white from russia poor as shit till I come to this country and used my intellect to get money. Nothing was given to me I earned it all. White pll disparity. Hah. What about before america? How come white ppl were inventi.g guns ships etc while blacks in africa had diddly squat?
@Arseniy:
So, is there a solution to your $40k problem? There must be a solution? It is an injustice. It merits reparation. What are you going to do to obtain reparation?
And you stated the government is steeling from you. It is the "biggest thieves". I agree. What are you going to do about that? That deserves to be addressed. It is a question of principle and dignity. Reparation is due.
Solution? the world is a corrupt evil place there is no solution. what's your solution to stop blacks from stealing give each of them 1,000,000 and a half$? I don't think that given that type of money to drug crazed criminals will stop them from comitin crimes. in fact I think that that type of money in their hands would only spur more violence drug use and crime. and what's your solution to fix all the corruption in the world again?
U r a tard
Denis,
Thanks for again showing the power of simple logic to cut through nonsense and clarify issues. For me, your article is valuable because:
1. It starkly demonstrates the enormous power of differential wealth accumulation, combined with lineal wealth inheritance, to create structures in inequality and domination which people become locked into for generations. The sheer magnitude is astounding. All that compounded interest has accrued to groups other than the slave descendants, and for those groups it serves as an enormous entitlement program. Conversely, the theft of income and lack of corresponding wealth accumulation constitutes an equally enormous dis-entitlement (e.g. dispossession) program for the slave descendants.
2. And it has also served, shall we say, to coax snakes out of their holes. Just look at some of the comments and the obstinate illogic and/or crass racism that lurks just below the surface. This goes to show what even the simplest and most obvious suggestion for correcting injustice is up against.
Best.
@C.M.Morrison,
Thanks.
I think "crass racism" is a relatively harmless consequence of "class racism". The first is easy to dissolve, the latter is extremely difficult to constrain.
Focusing on crass racism serves power, in many ways.
Malcolm X made these points very clearly. He preferred racist talkers to silent liberal racists, and he denounced collaborators.
Consider my radical book about racism: "Hierarchy and free expression in the fight against racism".
The better reparation calculation would be what is owed to the Native Americans that this country was stolen from.
As someone who has been working minimum wage jobs, I find this article to be incredibly dumb.
I live in a single room I'm renting in a house, I use public transit, I don't eat extravagantly, and I can barely scrape by every month. Something like buying a new pair of boots uses up all of my "savings" from more than one month.
While I agree that reparations are something that should be considered, the calculations you used are dubious at best. I'd be lucky to save 5% of my wages, after taxes and basic living expenses have been taken into account. If your figure had taken living expenses into account (which had to have been provided for the slaves in question), then I could appreciate the number, but as it stands, it's a rather pointless and useless calculation.
Your math doesn't work, Denis. As MattS says, you need to calculate the value of the labor at 19th century rates.
The average farm labor wage in the American South in 1830 appears to have been about eight dollars a month. (Not per hour, per month.) That works out to a total labor value of the slave population of about $200 million a year during the period you're looking at. Multiplied by seventy years, that's about $14 billion in 19th century dollars, or about $400 billion adjusted for inflation, which comes out to $10,000 per contemporary black American.
As to WHY you need to use 19th century wage rates, it's pretty simple -- the number you're trying to find is the value of the labor that was stolen.
Your thought experiment is this: Take the annual value of one slave's labor as X. Multiply X by the length of time that US slavery existed, and the number of slaves it affected, and that gives you (more or less) the value of that labor in 1860. Adjust that number for inflation, and you have the amount owed today.
But in order for the thought experiment to work, you need X to be the value of the labor THEN, not NOW. To do anything else doesn't make any sense.
What if you're biracial? Do you divide your reparation on racial genealogy? Would a 1/2 black 1/2 white only receive half the money? And then what about those who look white and gain from white privilege, but still have an African or biracial grandmother/father? Interesting to think about.
@studentactivism.net:
Angus, your thinking is too fast and superficial on this one. Think again. You leave out the crux of the problem, which is how does one *correctly* account for "inflation" between 1860 and present...?
See my further explanation in a comment above...
I have explained and justified how I account for inflation, now you must explain your unjustified inflation factor.
I am NOT applying today's wage to 1860, as you misunderstand. I am calculating 1860 wages in today dollars, so that I may calculate the amount (with interest) due today. Get it?
@Anonymous on minimum wage:
You are correct. I could have subtracted the food and shelter costs from the slaves' minimum wage pay, prior to continuing the calculation.
But I thought that if I did that, I would be accused of being a racist.
Seriously, the food and shelter costs for the sub-standard food and shelter (with no heat or air conditioning) would be small, AND the actual wage cost should be larger than minimum wage. So I decided to ignore food and shelter (and clothing) costs and stick to a simple calculation. In any case, the slave probably worked overtime (beyond the 10 hours I included) to make their own food... etc.
Basically, the slaves were never given the opportunity to spend any money, so essentially the entire amount of their labor for the master was stolen.
Your own case is one of wage slavery which requires a different calculation.
Yes, Reparations 2013! *Generational PTSD over 400 yrs*
If a child was raped, what are the last term effects?
If a child was kidnapped, what are the long term effects?
If a child was beat, what are the long term effects?
If a child was physically, mentally, sexually, verbally, and educationally abused, what are the long term effects?
What are the long term effects of depression?
What are the long term effects of neglect?
What are the long term effects of terrorism and fear?
What are the long term effects of bullying?
What are the long term effects of people telling you, you're an animal?
What are the long term effects of losing your family?
What are the long term effect of hate?
What are the long term effects of non proper health care?
What are the long term effects of unhealth living conditions?
What are the long term effects of unhealth foods?
What are the long term effects of racism?
What are the long term effects of being called N*gg*r?
What are the long term effects of having to hold your head down?
What are the long term effects of any abuse person that does not receive therapy?
What are the long term effects of negative environmental factors?
What are the long term effects on children that was raised by parents that lived these traumas daily?
What are the long term effects of anxiety?
* PTSD * Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Epigenetic
The researchers found a specific change in the FKBP5 gene was a common factor in the one third of the test participants that had developed some form of trauma related illness as a result of childhood trauma.
Denis, you're accounting for inflation -- you say -- by compounding the original amount by 2%, an admittedly arbitrary number. But you're ALSO accounting for inflation by starting off with a hugely inflated figure for the original. That's double-dipping.
What I've done is found a plausible original labor price, and then applied a scholarly estimate for actual inflation since then. (The US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an online inflation calculator based on the Consumer Price Index, but since it only goes back to 2013, I used one produced by scholars at the University of Oregon instead.)
@studentactivism/Angus:
Angus, please read this comment slowly. It contains information that corrects your misconception. "Inflation" (i.e., determining value in today-dollars) and "interest" (i.e., legitimate reparation for loss from not having been paid on time money that was due 150 years ago) are two different components of the calculation.
Sorry, but it seems to me that you are not making an authentic or sufficient effort to understand my printed statements. Get real.
@studentactivism.net:
Your own math is clearly incorrect. You left out the compound interest. You assume that only the principal (the 70 years of lost wages) should be paid back. But think of these stolen wages as a forced loan given by the slaves to their owners. When would a bank ever allow you to take out a 400 billion dollar loan, keep it and use it for 140 years, and then pay back only the original amount? So apply the 2% annual interest to your own calculation of $400 billion lost wages and you get not $10,000 per person but $160,000, a life changing amount, especially for poor people.
But Denis was deliberately extremely conservative in every value used in the calculation. He assumed a 2% interest rate, while the actual growth rate was much higher. According to one site I consulted (www.measuringworth.com/growth/) the annual real GDP growth rate for the US for 1860 to 2010 was 3.44%. Set the interest rate to this more realistic value and you get a multiplier of 1.0344^140 = 113. Plug this into the calculation, using your own estimate of $400 billion lost wages, and you get $1.13 million per slave descendant, essentially the same as Denis.
The point is that the result, using a correct calculation which includes the compound interest, is going to be simply ENORMOUS on any realistic assumptions.
@C.M.Morrison:
Indeed, I was concentrating on trying to get "Angus" to understand my calculation, but his version is full of error, yes.
He uses the lowest possible 1800s farm labor wage (for free workers) of $8, rather than the historic values in the range $8.5 to $14.60 per month; does not mention that these wages included board; and ignores the economic fact that farm labor was dramatically and artificially devalued relative to other labor precisely because of slave labor which was in the farm labor sector. In other words, free farm laborers were the most exploited free laborers.
He puts trust in "inflation" calculations which are notoriously sensitive to how the calculation is made, and which ignore the historic changes in income tax rates.
I prefer to use the direct approach that the minimum value in today-dollars of one hour of labor in any period is the minimum wage in today dollars, which happens to be close to the inflation adjusted value for non-farm labor...
@ Denis Rancourt
"Your own case is one of wage slavery which requires a different calculation."
Hasn't cost of living and income from low-wage jobs been historically close though?
Also, I typically work 50-60 hours a week..... Sometimes more than that.....
Don't be fooled by this guy. He is a racist (which is redundant because he is a white Euro-peon)We don't need you to chastise our mis-leaders we are doing that just fine. I am so tired of these wannabe bullshit profs and Canadian so-called anti-racists. They make me want to puke.
Hey Mr. "I did some smart calculations in 5 minutes", I dare you to post this comment. But of course you won't because white "anti-racists" think they are the new saviors of Black people and you couldn't possibly stand any critique of your lily-white "I'm a good guy" bullsh*t propaganda.
so true...move forward. if you were a slave you are deceased so
any reparation money could be put in college funding for black children who need financial assistance. no greater freedom than education!
I love how all the comments are skewed and never taking into account of free labor for 100plus yrs??
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