If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery : The Conversation

The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence committed by and against people long dead.

The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “a debt that is owed.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people.

Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with skepticism: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?

Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and paid them US$20,000 each to compensate for their suffering.

Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.

Compensating victims of Nazi enslavement

I am a professor of political science who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice. My recent work on Germany examines how the country dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.

Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers.

 

Source: If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery : The Conversation

(10) What will the US economy be like when Trump completes his first term? – QuoraA True Reflection of the America

A2A. So, I’ve read all of the answers here, as of today, from others first. The people who support Trump have all predicted the economy will be great. The people who do not support Trump are talking recession. As is typical, there were also a couple of bizarre answers. So, I’m going to talk about this from a different perspective. The question itself is not possible to answer because the possible outcomes are multi-variant. The economy in general, is not working for the common man. Trump, with no idea how to do his job, will not make it better.

I think that our economy has been broken for quite some time now and that no Republican who still believes in Trickle Down Economics is going to fix it. This is not to say Trump “believes” in this or doesn’t “believe” in it. He doesn’t have long term, objective, strategic thinking, doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and lies way too much for me to know what he’ll do next other than to continue to lie and cheat in effort to keep the power he’s recently attained.

Back to the economy. Through personal experience, and by actually listening to Trump supporters in rural America who feel they’ve lost their way of life, I am of the opinion that the late-stage capitalism we’re in isn’t going to change without something really drastic happening.

I grew up in a large city and had the advantage of always being around much cultural diversity. I won a scholarship to an exclusive prepatory school. I had friends and lived in a middle-class suburban home. Being a person who loves to learn, I sought to understand immigrants, Judaism, Mexican tomato pickers (migrant workers they were called), learned a second language (Spanish), learned about the Cuban culture, and lots of other things. Though, I had little understanding of rural America. So, as a young adult I traveled the country and wound up marrying a guy from middle Tennessee. I spent over a decade in Tennessee. Like every other culture out there, this group had its’ good points (strong work ethic, farmers are natural recyclers, able to tough it out for long non-prosperous times, & strong sense of community), and its’ bad points (lack of higher education, fear of strangers [like me], antagonism against what they consider to be the “elites”, and severe poverty pockets). I was utterly surprised to realize they considered me an “elite”. So after much verbal battery and some social exclusion, I taught myself to speak English with their accent, to dumb down my vocabulary, and hide my avid reading. I began to fit in.

While in Tennessee I worked a great deal of manual labor jobs including plant nursery field laborer (for years), roadside vegetable market cashier, cut down trees and chopped firewood to sell, worked as a construction painter, and newspaper jogger in a large press room. I learned a great deal about farming too.

 

Source: (10) What will the US economy be like when Trump completes his first term? – Quora