My country and yours was built on people moving from Europe, Africa, Asia to our New World. Hurrah! The evil, anti-immigration policy is to kick away the ladder after our ancestors had used it climb out of their poverty in England or Portugal, Ireland or Italy.
But even the forced migration from Africa to Charleston or Recife enriched the descendants of its victims, by letting them participate for a century or two in an innovative economy. It’s a paradox of past exploitation such as the slave trade, or sending convicted criminals to Georgia or Australia, that far from justifying reparations for the long-past forced movement, the descendants should subsidize their now distant cousins back in the Old world.
Two of my great grandparents moved from Norway, got married on the ship, and birthed in Illinois one of my grandparents. So I am one-fourth Norwegian. Half Irish, from my father. Yet 1000 years ago my Viking ancestors from the west of Norway enslaved and exported many Irish. The consequence is that according to both Ancestry.com and 23-and-Me I have more Irish genes than my family history would say, two-thirds instead of one half, and correspondingly less simply Norwegian, about 12 percent. To whom am I to apply for reparations for the ancient enslavement?
A lawyer looks backwards, to achieve justice. Good. But an economist looks forward, to achieve efficiency. Also good. The economics is that historical expenditure is not a cost for your next decision. Fixed cost, we economists say, such as interest paid on your loan to buy the farm, are fixed, and irrelevant to the prospective cost of buying a new tractor.
Reparations? Not unless he theft is recent, and therefore it would discorurage new thefts, themselves causing inefficiency. Yes, repetitions for theft of Jewish paintings by German Nazis. Yes, for recent discrimination against Blacks, such as my country’s disgraceful use of the state’s power to segregate neighborhoods. Admittedly, people who do not want justice to be done even when the injustice is recent, such as Trump’s or Bolsonaro’s assault on the constitutions, say “Let’s move on.” No, prosecute them, as you are doing and as the US has been slow to do.
But reparations for the tangle of ancient injustices is neither just nor efficient.