HN user
For those complaining about the comparison, they did at least mention it:
>> Comparing events that happened more than a century apart has its perils. For instance, the population of the United States in 1918 was a third of what it is now. So as a percentage of the national population, the Spanish flu deaths still has the lead on Covid-19.
It seems like you're deliberately ignoring the vastly different circumstances African Americans and their ancestors faced and continue to face in America. You are making an argument that assumes every one of these groups of people came to America on the same terms, with a level playing field, when that's patently incorrect.
Here is what frustrates me about your argument: it completely reduces any and all African American achievements to nothing and ignores all the extra help (or lack of hindrance) non-African Americans received, while also minimizing the marginalization other ethnic minorities faced at the same time. I see that you are trying to lean toward "Black people are inherently lazy by nature", and that is ignorant of the incredible amount of work they have put in, beginning even before the end of slavery, only to be crushed, time and time again. In addition, it ignores the many very successful, and even moderately successful African Americans today. You're reducing all African Americans to lazy do-nothings, and that is simply not true.
Since we're focusing on Asian Americans, they came to America by choice, and certainly suffered discrimination and marginalization, both legal and social, but their situations are so different as to be incomparable. This is relying on the 'model minority' trope, which was begun and pushed in 1966 in the media and by politicians to try to downplay African Americans' struggle for equity. "The Asians work hard, so why can't you just shut up and work hard, too? Who cares if you can't vote? Why would you need to vote?" The argument was literally used to tell African Americans they could grin and bear segregation, disenfranchisement, etc. It's more than just discrimination, not being able to be a citizen, and no affirmative action. African Americans, especially in the South, may as well not have been citizens, as they were effectively barred from voting by the tests, intimidation, and violence. But also: "model minority" is a myth. Asian Americans even formed their own Civil Rights movement shortly thereafter, patterned after that of the African Americans' movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority#United_States And that's an awfully large group of people to lump all together. When you break it down farther, not all Asian Americans are doing well, because of discrimination and other struggles. https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/stop-pointing-asian-...
Africans were brought to America against their will and forced to work until they died, with nothing to pass on to their children. In contrast, the Irish and English and other European immigrants of the same time were indentured servants whose terms ended, at which point they could begin to attempt to build capitol. The Irish et al have both a lot more time and skin color on their side at moving up the social ladder. Despite the fact Irish and Italian immigrants were at one point not considered 'white', that became increasingly difficult to tell as they assimilated into society with each generation, because they aren't brown-skinned.
If we start the clock in the year 1619 (first slave ship arrives), then all of those European immigrants have at the very least 249 years head start on the Africans and their descendants. (I have used 1868 for that calculation because that is when the last enslaved people were actually freed). And that's only if we ignore the rest of the history to come.
But that's not where it ended for formerly enslaved people, there are repeated injustices that add years to this calculation.
It takes a lot of work and courage to escape slavery and many tried and failed, with mortal consequences. But those who did went on to become great orators and advocates for the enslaved men, women, and children in America (Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, to name a few).
After the war, during the Reconstruction period, African Americans participated in government, built and attended schools, attained advanced degrees, became lawyers, provided charity, were business owners. And then they were crushed again in what the Southerners called "Redemption". Those who could got tf out. The KKK assassinated people. Any African Americans who tried to vote were threatened or killed, and later tested with unpassable tests. Those who were trying to become farmers were yoked with another form of slavery in sharecropping, where the landholder got to decide how much they paid the farmer for their goods, to the point where they had to take their children out of school just to have enough hands to make ends meet. They were made second class citizens because of Jim Crow laws and distinct criminal codes for African Americans, putting them in prison at higher rates and, again, putting them back into slavery in the form of chain gangs.
Even with all that adversity, some African Americans managed to thrive. You may have heard of 'Black Wallstreet', the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The land was bought through a "legal stricture designed specifically for [African Americans'] benefit" by O. W. Gurley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_District,_Tulsa#O._W...). He bought 40 acres that were "only to be sold to colored", so that's kind of a handout, but he still had to pay for it. He made the best of the situation in Jim Crow by building a rooming house and attracted other African American entrepreneurs and workers. African American-owned businesses followed to serve the community of people who could not patronize white businesses. White residents of Tulsa also patronized these businesses (especially the jazz clubs). Much of the neighborhood's inhabitants were very wealthy. Just before the race massacre, Gurley's estimated net worth would have been as much as $13.6 million in 2018 dollars.
And then the people of Tulsa massacred the neighborhood. They shot its residents and burned down all the buildings. The police did nothing, or actively participated (because African Americans couldn't become police officers in the South). No one was compensated. The town literally tried to scrub the event from memory by threatening or killing anyone who talked about it. So you can't say African Americans haven't made gradual progress. That was incredibly quick progress. Gurley's wealth increased $10M in a matter of 7 years, to have it all burned to the ground in a matter of hours. Think of where the descendants of Greenwood could have been today, but for that.
And then came the New Deal. Nice for some, but not for African Americans nationwide, and especially not in the South. The New Deal made carve-outs to placate the Southern Democrats. People in domestic service and farming weren't covered under minimum wage and it exempted child labor for agriculture, largely hurting African Americans who weren't allowed to get better jobs in the South. https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150...
So for those who couldn't manage to make it out of the South, that puts the setback timer at 1965 ish, because even into the 1960's, men, women, and children in the South were being killed when they tried to climb the success ladder.
That's 1965 - 1619 = 346 years behind other ethnic groups who had the benefit of being able to build generational wealth during those years.
What about the people who managed to escape the South? They still faced discrimination in jobs, couldn't buy houses in the same neighborhoods, which meant they and their children were exposed to pollution, negative influence, poor schooling (remember, this was still before Brown v. Board of Ed), crimes of opportunity. The GI Bill didn't cover African Americans. The list goes on.
AND YET, there are many, many African Americans today who are successful. They and their ancestors have had to literally fight tooth and nail to get where they are. They didn't just have to go from farm workers etc to doctors and lawyers. They had to do that repeatedly, over, and over, and over, every time they got crushed again.
Meanwhile the billionaires or hundred-millionaires will still be able to find a way to reduce their tax because they have enough capital to hire an army of tax accountants.
Dems shout about billionaires and hundred-millionaires for years. Yet they never make law that targets this particular group. What is up with that?
That's an excellent point. The IRS is chronically underfunded and the added funding for it was removed in the latest bill. They can afford to sneak around the tax code because of hired help and loopholes (like taking out loans rather than paying from money you 'own').
I do think focus is much too powerful on 'moderately wealthy' people.
Relevant: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-treasury-irs/irs-chie...
I know audits are random, but I really think if you make over a million or something, you should be automatically audited. But then...that would require funding the IRS adequately.
Edit: typo
First: we both know how to use search engines, so your assumption that poor rural Americans use the most...etc could also stand to be backed up with research. But fair point, here's some proof for you:
I don't have access to academic papers, but here's the one they're referencing: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0579-8 in this article: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/3/20/2118481...
1) The very rich use vastly more energy (much of it in travel, but also in the production of the stuff/properties/vehicles they buy) than the rest of us so that means they rely on the energy infrastructure more. Energy infrastructure uses all the logistics infrastructure (rails, roads, ocean, air, pipelines, etc).
2) Higher energy use means they have a much higher carbon footprint and are more responsible for detriments to poorer people because of climate change. Extremely rich people can afford to escape the effects of climate change and pollution, the poor cannot. So if they're responsible for more, they should be more responsible for cleaning up after themselves. This addresses your hurricane zones and sea level rise areas.
3) They travel more and a lot of public infrastructure goes into that (again: roads, air, FAA, airports...)
4) they buy more luxury goods which, again, get to them on public infrastructure (our ocean ports, roads, rail, planes, etc).
5) You'll notice in that paper mentioned in the vox article that healthcare is also used more by the top 10% than the bottom 10% (45% to 0.5%).
6) They rely more on the communications infrastructure (cell phone networks, the internet)
I could keep going, but I'll just end up repeating the paper.
I think you could argue the very wealthy don't rely much on public safety services because they can afford not to live in areas with higher crime rates and can hire their own private security. Possibly also schools.
You make it sound kind of like a random happenstance that the 'natural process' didn't happen organically for African Americans. I'd like to point out that it was actively thwarted by:
* The FHA and redlining * the backlash to Reconstruction (Jim Crow segregation) * no compensation for harms of slavery, discrimination, etc (despite other groups getting financial compensation; eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988) * lack of protection of suffrage until the VRA in 1965 (despite the 15th amendment)
just to name a few.
The new rate would apply to those in the top tax bracket for long-term capital gains, which in 2021 covers individual filers earning more than $445,850 and married joint filers earning more than $501,600, according to the Ways and Means Committee.
Would have been nice to have that in the title, because it seems more fear-mongering than necessary.
People who make that much and more use more infrastructure and benefit more from stock market gains, they should pay an accordingly fair amount of taxes.