California has been unable to solve its problems with forest fires, energy shortages, poverty, homelessness, and a regime of regulations and taxes that is sending its residents to search for greener pastures. The state still has no plan to solve all of those problems, but at least it is now tackling the relatively minor matter of paying reparations for slavery.
It’s not that reparations are a terrible idea, any more than they are nearly impossible to put into practice. The process of determining the who, how, and how much will be onerous enough. California will begin that process soon, as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the creation of a task force to explore a possible reparations project.
But the state’s priorities are misplaced, and its ability to solve even the most basic problems is very much in doubt. The state is on the verge of rolling blackouts once again, following an August heat wave that exposed the state’s weak power grid. The heat is exacerbated by ongoing wildfires in what is quickly becoming an annual tradition in the Golden State.
The state’s policy failures are responsible for a failing energy regime and have worsened wildfires. That California politicians would be able to solve a complex and controversial national issue like reparations is laughable. But what’s more striking is that black residents of California, like nearly all of the state’s residents, would probably be better off moving somewhere else.
California’s tax code and regulatory regime is causing residents and businesses to pack up and move out. Residents have seen their supplemental or even primary incomes taken away due to the state’s destructive law targeting freelancers and the gig economy.
California’s leaders, for their part, have been fighting to preserve tax breaks for its richest residents. Nancy Pelosi has been fighting to remove the cap on the state and local tax deduction to please the residents of her high-income neighborhood ever since Republicans imposed the cap in their 2017 tax cuts.
So while California can’t fix its energy policy, meaningfully limit forest fires, or lower the cost of living for its own residents, the state thinks it can figure out how to effectively distribute reparations for the practice of enslavement, which ended over 150 years ago, and took place in other states.
You know what? If they do somehow figure it out, I suspect they’ll simply tax it all back into the state’s coffers.
