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.)
I like to think of online gaming. 2 teams against each other. One side uses cheats for part of the match and runs the score way up. Midway through, they turn the cheats off and apologize, but the score is still lopsided.
Old players might drop out and new players might join in, perhaps to the point where most players in the match were never around when the cheating occurred. You might even argue that some of the score gap might be attributable to differences in skill between the two teams. But it’s undeniable that one team is benefiting from an unfair advantage, and doing nothing to adjust for that perpetuates the unfairness.
Now, imagine that the game also has a mechanism that makes it easier to stay in the lead once you get there.