According to the Daily Mail residents of San Francisco lined up to attend Tuesday’s meeting of the board to show their support for the many benefits that will be offered to descendants of slaves. “The San Francisco proposals of last night were some of the most generous I have ever heard,” which left me with two questions.
“My dad always taught me never to beg. And I am not begging you today. It is time for you to do the right thing and provide us with reparations: make us whole,” insisted Sgt. Yulanda Williams, president of the police association Officers for Justice. The council must have listened because what they came up with has a whole lotta spendin’ going on.
Williams technically didn’t ask for anything. But she insisted. See the amount that the city will pay for reparations.
Over the next 250 years, qualified black residents will be entitled to an annual stipend of $97,000. They will also be eligible for an annual stipend of $97,000 over the next 250 years.
First, I want to know how the city council came up with such generous reparations packages.
In 2021 San Francisco’s median household income was $77,000. If you’re willing to move outside and make a living selling fentanyl, you can live in San Francisco with a homeless stipend of $620 per month.
I could not find any data on San Francisco’s average household wealth, but I was able to estimate it to be around $5 million. In most cases, it took many years to accumulate.
Second question. What is the city going to do?
The city is home to approximately 42,000 people of color. There are approximately 42,000 residents of color in the city.
Simple, right? It is difficult to get paid, but easy to qualify
The annual $97,000 stipend will be worth just over $4 billion annually for the next 250 years. This amount is nearly half of the annual budget of the City, which spends more per capita than any American municipality, other than Washington, D.C.
The median price for a home in SF is (gulp) $1.3 million. Every single person given the ability to buy a home there for $1 (with the city presumably making up the difference) is going to take advantage, even if only to flip it for a very tidy profit. So City Hall would be looking at another $54 billion, give or take, be paid out over time — a rather short amount of time, I’d wager — as residents start waving dollar bills in front of homes for sale.
That $5 million lump sum would cost city residents $210 billion, right away. The state budget for all of California last year was almost exactly the same, at $213 billion — and that included an $18 billion deficit.
Totaling up to 250 years of annual stipends, the one-time lump-sum payments, and the homeownership benefit, city taxpayers would be on the hook for nearly [Dr. The evil voice again] ONE POINT ONE TRILLION DOLLARS between now and the year 2,273 AD.
Reflecting, I realized there was another question that any of my San Francisco friends or neighbors could answer: What about the systemic racism that exists in your beautiful progressive city? Is it necessary to declare bankruptcy in order to fix it?
I came to the conclusion that there was a fourth question. It’s a very sad maker.
San Francisco will not pay these reparations. City Hall would not be able to borrow a penny from a lender. I also haven’t considered cash flow risks like how taxpayers and beneficiaries could flee.
Fourth question: “Why is San Francisco City Council so cruel?”
Maybe that’s why San Francisco is concerned about systemic racism.
