A painless, just path to restitution

When something is stolen, restitution restores it to its proper owner per the Mandator y Restitution Act of 1996. This act provides restitution processes for crimes that occurred even before the act was passed, though federal judges have discretion as to how restitution may actually occur.

As the Joe Biden-kamala Harris administration prepares to tackle the many problems it has inherited, one deep-seated issue it will confront is the question of restitutions for the African American and Native Americans whose lives, families, rights, work, opportunities and participation in the American dream were destroyed, killed, stolen, kidnapped and per verted since our country began.

From 1800 to 1900, our countr y — primarily the U.S. Army — slaughtered or deliberately infected roughly 12 million Native Americans. Some estimates approach 15 million people killed. The U.S. committed genocide on a large scale, killing more than double the number of Jewish people the Nazis murdered from 1939 to 1945, albeit it did so over a longer time frame.

During that centur y, U.S. slave-owners not only caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of slaves, they abused their labor without pay, ef fectively stealing the value of their work. Conser vatively, the estimated value of the labor stolen from slaves from 1800 to 1865, compounded to 2020 at 2% annual interest, approximates $50 trillion (average number of slaves X 11 cents an hour X 65 years, time valued).

And this estimate does not include at least $10 trillion denied African Americans since 1940 until 2020, attributed to appreciation in real estate.

People of color were denied this value because Black codes were enacted in most jurisdictions throughout the U.S. — even in the north — that prohibited the sale of commercial or residential real estate to Black investors, landlords or families.

A reminder of the terrible constancy of the injustices and systematic racism the United States has visited on Native and Black Americans is the difference in current median family income (2019): whites, $66,000; Native, $45,000, and Black, $42,000.

Also of note is that 21% (2018) of Black Americans live in poverty and 26% of Native Americans versus 10% for white Americans.

Nothing we as a countr y can do will ever truly repay Native and Black Americans for the heinous crimes they and their forebears have experienced. But we can tr y.

Consider this:

From 2014 to 2020, the U.S. has averaged $1.9 trillion per year in combined value of mergers, acquisitions and initial public of ferings. The values of these transactions invariably accrue to shareholders, bankers, private equity and venture capital investors.

A 2% tax on the value of these deals would be negligible to their beneficiaries, but it would not be negligible to the millions of people it could help and who have been denied restitution for far too long. Moreover, given how much wealth was over tly stolen that has accrued to the benefit of many of those who generations later benefit from these transaction, the source of the tax is fitting.

If we taxed these transactions at 2%, the U.S. could establish a $38 billion annual fund to invest in Black and Native communities, early childhood education, child care, scholarships, health care coverage, minority businesses, food security, schools, infrastructures and services that suppor t these communities.

To fund what would equate to nearly eight

Gates Foundations per year would provide a powerful force for good for those families who were abused, robbed, enslaved and killed, and who have never received restitution for the crimes committed by our countr y.

Restitution via this painless tax could begin to expiate the crimes that the United States committed but has never provided restitution to those so grievously harmed.

If not now, when?

Sources for information in this article came from officialdata.org; the University of Missouri; in2013dollars.com; quora.com; Weber State University; the Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances; pwc.com and Statista.

Tim Wolf is a 26-year resident of Boulder, retired global CFO of two major public companies and is the chair of Bridge House, which seeks to end homelessness through its Ready to Work programs.