Bill Bonner on the progress of black Americans since the Civil War

For a hundred years following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, Blacks continued to make progress – more or less like every other immigrant group – learning skills, entering the professions, setting up their own businesses, and closing the gap between themselves and Whites. 

But then, do-gooders and world-improvers began to use Blacks in a novel way – with disastrous consequences.

In 1964, came the War on Poverty, which gave money to Blacks – but only if they didn’t marry and didn’t work. It also created a new, cronyfied Black elite – who figured out how to game the $21 trillion poverty/racism industry, getting jobs, grants, and special privileges for “minority” enterprises.

Then, in 1971, the War on Drugs brought a whole new level of violence, as gangs fought for market share. Drug laws put millions of Blacks behind bars… nurturing a criminal culture and making it harder than ever for many to get jobs in the normal economy.

And then came the funny money.

Over decades, it shifted manufacturing jobs overseas (it was easier and cheaper to buy things from overseas with fake money than it was to make them here). This, along with minimum wages, kicked the bottom rung out from under the laboring classes – Black and White.

And in 2009, the Federal Reserve kicked its program of money-printing into high gear… with a massive transfer of wealth from the middle and lower classes to the top 10%.

And if that weren’t enough, as mentioned above… the Fed has now gone all out… with huge bailouts to Wall Street, in which very few Blacks participate. Overall, by our estimate, in the last 90 days, the typical Black got only 1/33rd as much fake money as the top 10%.

~ Bill Bonner, "On Juneteenth, a Conversation on Reparations," Rogue Economics, June 19, 2020