California Estimated To Pay $1.2 Million Per Black Citizen In Reparations Despite Having No Way To Pay For It

Economists are estimating that California’s plan for reparations for black citizens will cost $1.2 million per black resident, paid throughout their lifetime. 

California, which just recently defaulted on its $18.5 billion debt (per the Hoover Institution), is looking into the possibility of reparations for its black citizens. The idea is to pay the state's black citizens as compensation for a legacy of harm, although California joined the Union as a free state in 1850.

Wildly, the estimate isn’t even the totality of the reparations, as the $1.2 million per citizen is just a partial, rough estimate. The report put out by California’s task force on reparations said that “it is an economically conservative initial assessment of what losses, at a minimum, the State of California caused or could have prevented, but did not,” per the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Members of the task force are expected to vote Saturday at Mills College in Oakland on whether they will be adopting the report's findings. While the vote is simply for the draft report, it can also be seen as a larger representation of whether the state of California will move forward and how it will handle the reparations. 
Regardless of the decision reached, the California legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) will have the final say on the matter. Even if the program were to be approved, there still hasn’t been any outline as to how to pay for the program. An economist has estimated that the plan will cost upwards of $800 billion, completely eclipsing the state's $297 billion annual budget. 

It is very possible, however, that the $800 billion cost will be eclipsed given California's bloated bureaucratic inefficiency. The program is attempting to limit the extent somewhat by only allowing black citizens who can trace their lineage to chattel slavery, or prove their ancestors immigrated into the country before 1900. Bizarrely, a criterion not included is how long a citizen has been living within the state of California. 

The proposal is expected to get notable opposition from Republican lawmakers in the state legislature as well as moderate Democrats who have poked holes into the flawed plan. 

If the plan were to go through, it is wholly likely to cost California taxpayers obscene amounts of money, on top of the already ludicrous taxes they have to pay normally. According to TurboTax, California already pays the highest taxes of any state in the Union, and adding another $800 billion to the already bloated state spending would only worsen the problem.

For the sake of California citizens, one can only hope that the Republican lawmakers can prevent this woke sham from further bankrupting taxpayer's pockets.