How are slavery reparations fair?
How are slavery reparations fair?
This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states "the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries".
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That's 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I've paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn't this just a country that isn't doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying "oh there's this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling"?
Shouldn't payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don't flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don't know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
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Britain paid reparations to the slaveowners and their descendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Compensation_Act_1837
The last check went out in 2015. So yes, people alive today benefited from this. directly.
If they want to make it fair, they should pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people and/or take back the money they gave to slaveowners.Wait, Britain was compensating the descents of slave owners for the loss of their slaves less than ten years ago? Wtf?
Yup. From the article:
Payments of the bonds to the descendants of creditors was only finalised in 2015 when the British Government decided to modernise the gilt portfolio by redeeming all remaining undated gilts.
Since 2018, numerous Freedom of Information Act requests have been sent to the British government and Bank of England for the names of those who were paid with the bonds, of which all were denied.