Reparations Payments Could ‘Devastate California,’ Economist Says, Costing Trillions and Causing More Residents To Flee

As California’s legislature charges ahead with its plans to implement reparations for descendants of slaves in America and those suffering from its legacy, concerns are growing that they could further wreck the fiscally-strained Golden State and accelerate outmigration.  The state’s Senate this week approved a trio of bills — sending them to the state assembly — which would create a new state agency, including a genealogy office, a fund in the state treasury, and a measure to compensate Black families for property taken by eminent domain.  “Reparations would devastate California fiscally,” a senior fellow in business and economics at the Pacific Research Institute, Wayne Winegarden, tells the Sun. “They would require unprecedented increases in spending or unprecedented tax increases,” he notes, adding that the proposals would “weaken growth, reduce income growth, reduce employment opportunities, and encourage more people to migrate away from the state.” Though California entered the Union in 1850 as a free state and deployed thousands of soldiers to fight for the North, the state has for several years been leading the way nationally on reparations that backers say will address the state’s “legacy of enslavement.” After a law was passed in 2020 to create a Reparations Task...