“Britain spent 1.8 per cent of its GDP between 1808 and 1867 on eradicating slavery – the most expensive moral foreign policy in human history, and one fiercely resisted by many African kings” who engaged in the slave trade, notes Daniel Hannan, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.
But some left-leaning politicians have called for Britain to pay reparations to black people, because slavery once existed in British colonies. David Lammy, a black member of parliament from the ruling Labour party who now serves as Britain’s Foreign Secretary, said in 2018 that “We don’t just want to hear an apology. We want reparations.”
Hannan said that this demand has “encouraged groups around the world who want Britain to pay them for all manner of imagined wrongs. These groups, treated as a lunatic fringe even five years ago, are now celebrating what they see as a victory at the heart of the British state.”
In the London Telegraph, Hannan objects to England paying reparations, citing the Biblical statement that “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” (Ezekiel 18:20-21). Hannan also notes that objectors have said that if reparations are justified based on past actions, “Britain should in that case get reparations from Denmark for the Viking attacks” on England in the Middle Ages.
Hannan also points out “every human being alive today is descended from both slaves and slave-owners. It could hardly be otherwise, human bondage having been common to all pre-modern civilisations.” So slavery is not a uniquely black experience, and compensating black people alone for the enslavement of their ancestors is a racial preference (that is unfair and potentially an illegal form of racial discrimination).
Moreover, Britain not only abolished slavery before other major powers, but spent large amounts of money fighting it in the 19th century: “Britain’s anti-slavery campaign, which began in 1807, was resisted by many African kings, who saw slavery as both naturally ordained and economically essential.” As a result, he says, “Reparations would be wrong on every level. They are aimed narrowly at the country that, in a slave-owning world, distinguished itself by a decades-long struggle to end the foul business.”
In the United States, Democratic politicians such as Kamala Harris have called for the U.S. government to pay reparations to black people, even though that would cost the federal government trillions of dollars, would result in costly copycat demands for reparations by other groups, and would not solve underlying racial problems such as wealth gaps (which were not caused by slavery or Jim Crow in the first place).
Harris has also endorsed $5 trillion in tax hikes, including corporate tax rates that would be higher than in Socialist Venezuela, and higher than in Europe and China. She supports tax rates on dividends and capital gains that would be twice as high as in communist China.
But those tax increases would be nowhere near enough to pay for all the government spending Harris wants. A single piece of legislation proposed by Kamala Harris would cost $21 trillion, doubling the federal budget.
As vice president, Kamala Harris cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate to pass massive spending increases backed by Joe Biden that made inflation get worse, according to economists.
Harris also has supported other, even more expensive legislation, such as the Green New Deal (which would cost at least $50 trillion and perhaps up to $90 trillion).
Kamala Harris is hostile to free speech, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. In 2019, Kamala Harris called for restricting online speech and pressuring social media companies to restrict speech. As California’s attorney general, Harris was especially hostile to free speech, notes the Wall Street Journal.
“While in the US Senate, nobody was to the left of Kamala Harris. Not even” socialist senator “Bernie Sanders,” notes Jeremy Redfern, citing a ranking by a government watchdog website.
