Things have been hectic around here today on the first Juneteenth holiday that now is part of the calendar of federal holidays.
Makes me wish I wasn’t retired and still had a job, so I could have taken the day off — with pay.
I guess I should have run around town looking for a statue of a confederate war hero to pull down, but I passed on that. No big deal since it probably would have been hard to find such a target in my home area.
I did read where the usual suspects are using the occasion to demand reparations to all blacks for slavery that ended more than 150 years ago. Even if we’re just talking the one-time promise of 40 acres and a mule, with compounded interest that could represent quite an expenditure by the same Biden-led federal government that proclaimed this an official holiday just two days back.
But cost won’t matter in this era of Modern Monetary Policy, when debt is king and only fools repay their borrowings. Our federal government, as the world’s largest debtor, is encouraging its citizenry to join the payment moratorium.
College students can’t be expected to repay their debts. Tenants can’t be expected to pay their rent, no matter how many stimulus handouts have been made, and can’t be evicted for their nonpayments. Shoplifting is being legalized in enlightened precincts such as San Francisco.
The trend is clear, only suckers honor financial obligations.
And governmental grifting has become something to be celebrated where once it had been condemned.
Against that backdrop, ginning up a few hundred billion, or a trillion dollars, or more out of thin air to compensate people whose great great great grandparents suffered won’t be a big problem.
While we’re at it, let us give Native Americans a better deal. Living on reservations, running lightly regulated gambling operations and getting some other government benefits is scant compensation for them having been pushed off their lands from sea to shining sea by our ancestors.
It would seem those Native Americans have prior claim on any national wealth considering their wronging predates slavery and its end in the United States. Pay them first, then let the blacks press their claims against Native Americans.
Considering the mounting price inflation we are witnessing — and the Federal Reserve actually got around to acknowledging it this week — the cost of making things right with Native Americans and blacks won’t be as costly in terms of actual wealth as one would think.
Think Weimar Germany or, more recently, Zimbabwe. Promise everyone a billion dollars, print up the appropriate unbacked currency in said denomination, distribute the bills, then unleash hyperinflation across the land which will bring us back to a time when virtually worthless money was burned in Germany to enable people to keep warm.
Truly this is a great time to be alive and dispensing monetary favors to all, or receiving same. When the bill comes due for this spending orgy, as it eventually must, rest assured that it then will be a very bad time to be alive.
But don’t allow such reality to intrude on your Juneteenth celebrations.
Sam Ross Jr's site 