(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – The city of San Francisco would have to pay at least $110 billion of taxpayer money to its longtime black residents if a recommendation by an advisory committee on slavery reparations is adopted, according to a report.
The total sum of the “hefty reparations” in question is based on a conservative estimate after the committee published a draft report stating that San Francisco should pay $5 million in reparation to every one of its eligible black residents, The National Review reported.
To be eligible to receive the sizable taxpayer-funded sum, making them multimillionaires, black city residents need to have identified as African American or black on public documents for no less than ten years.
There are eight other requirements, but eligible individuals must meet only two to qualify for the massive handouts.
Those include being “personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs” or a “Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before 1865.”
“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced, and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy,” the committee said.
The reparations panel is supposed to submit its final proposal to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the city government, in June.
The report estimates that if the reparation requirements are met by only half of the city’s 45,000 black residents, San Francisco would still have to pay them $112.5 billion in taxpayer money.
The city’s budget for the 2022–2023 fiscal year is $14 billion, while the state of California’s budget is $308 billion.
The above estimate does not factor in other proposals in the committee’s report. One of those requires that the city supplement the income of low-income recipients so it becomes equal to the area median income (AMI) of about $97,000, which would be done for at least 250 years.
Another recommendation provides for “a comprehensive debt forgiveness program,” giving “Black households an opportunity to build wealth” by canceling student loans, housing loans, and credit-card debt.
According to Steven Hayward from the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, if every black resident qualified for the $5 million payment, San Francisco would have to spend $223 billion in taxpayer money. That would cost every non-black resident $263,000.
“Who’s going to stay in San Francisco if you actually try to impose that kind of cost on people, whether through direct taxation or through debt? Everyone would leave,” Hayward said.
“I can’t believe that they’re actually serious with this, and what they thought they were really going to accomplish, other than making an opening bargaining position — put out a really big number and hope that maybe you’ll get something more modest but still, in their mind, significant,” he added.
The San Francisco reparations report came after a state panel proposed that California pay black residents $350,000 to $800,000 each, costing the state between $784 billion and $1.8 trillion in taxpayer money.
“While blacks are the only group held in slavery, you have lots of other ethnic groups who suffered serious discrimination in American history,” Hayward said.
“This is an invitation to open ethnic conflict in the country… Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the bill setting up the state commission to look into this, has said nothing about it… I think they know that this is political dynamite and they’re hoping it just goes away,” the scholar added.
An advisory committee’s recommendation that San Francisco pay out hefty reparations to longtime black residents could cost the city at least $110 billion, at even a conservative estimate. https://t.co/D5uJy2O8dP
— National Review News Wire (@NRWire) January 23, 2023
