Income and wealth inequality is fair.

Originally posted by Artol
Slavery makes slave holders richer. Free markets as they are defined today make the people in charge of the means of production (or patents or things like that) richer. And they may sometimes make people generally richer, but they can also make the poorer poorer, depends a bit on the situation.

No, there were poor whites before and after, people are generally poor because they are born into poverty and don't have many options of advancement, a lot of this has been alleviated somewhat by communal, social and state efforts, like compulsory schooling and things like that.

For a lot of reasons, because the slaves were ripped from their homes and removed from their culture, they were made into subhumans based on their race, their children were equally enslaved, in some parts especially the Caribbean they were worked to death, families were torn apart at the desire of the owners, etc. It was a very bad situation, and a lot of things like the marriage idea, or that a lot of slaves were freed in the south and became land owners are really propaganda by the south afterwards, with little contemporary evidence of this on any meaningful scale. Of course the time after the war wasn't great for black people either, racism continued or was even actively made worse, and the destruction of unions from the 50s on has been incredibly detrimental to black communities as well.

The US was incredibly late in outlawing slavery, much later than the UK as well, which was already relatively late. Certainly in terms of European or colonial powers. I'm not interested in arguing for any other kinds of slavery, but there has been a lot of whitewashing of the incredibly brutal institution of racism in the United States.

Source.

Under the program's first phase, qualifying residents would get $25,000 to use toward homeownership, home improvement and mortgage assistance, Simmons said. To qualify, residents must either have lived in or been a direct descendant of a Black person who lived in Evanston between 1919 to 1969 who suffered discrimination in housing because of city ordinances, policies or practices.

Can't see how this is legal, so hopefully people fight against this and take the city to court if need be.

Originally posted by Newjak
The U.S. was not one of the first countries bro abolish slavery.many countries were doing so decades before the U.S. did.

What a lot of people try to give North America credit for is not having slavery for as long as other countries. When you consider how new a nation we were though it's not much of a boast.

Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) formally declared independence from France in 1804 and became the first sovereign nation in the Western Hemisphere to unconditionally abolish slavery in the modern era. The northern states in the U.S. all abolished slavery by 1804.

.... What about this then ?

Originally posted by Artol
Free trade is a misnomer anyways, what we call free trade is certain rules hat are applied to trade to eliminate some tariffs. But the relatively recent free trade boom, things like the WTO, have been detrimental to the eradication of poverty, they have slowed the growth rate in developing countries and have accelerated the wealth inequality in developed countries.

Explain to me in the simplest way possible what you think free trade is. Im not sure you have the right definition.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
The slave trade is thriving everywhere. In many ways people in poverty or mentally vulnerable or convicted of a crime are susceptible no matter the location some societies encourage it more than others. Sweatshops, chain gangs, it's all slavery.

Not america to right ?

Originally posted by ilikecomics
Not america to right ?

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
Oh yeah!

From my pov you're saying slavery exists in america rn.
Is that correct ?

Originally posted by ilikecomics
From my pov you're saying slavery exists in america rn.
Is that correct ?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-1209-13th-amendment-slavery-20201208-rvdjpk462bc2hcfmj6oz2vs32i-story.html

The easiest answer.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
yup

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-1209-13th-amendment-slavery-20201208-rvdjpk462bc2hcfmj6oz2vs32i-story.html

The easiest answer.

Included in the 13th Amendment was this stipulation: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In essence, one simple clause created a new form of slavery that led to a mass incarceration epidemic that denied African Americans basic human rights, with ramifications that still exist today.

Yeah, that's terrible.

Originally posted by Old Man Whirly!
yup

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-1209-13th-amendment-slavery-20201208-rvdjpk462bc2hcfmj6oz2vs32i-story.html

The easiest answer.

Originally posted by Klaw
Yeah, that's terrible.

Who created the law that created a new class of slaves ? I'm guessing like all the other laws it was the state.

Originally posted by ilikecomics
Who created the law that created a new class of slaves ? I'm guessing like all the other laws it was the state.

13th Amendment, so yeah.

Originally posted by Klaw
13th Amendment, so yeah.

Hmm in a free market you'd have universally preferable behavior, I don't think slavery is universally preferable.

But if you have a multi trillionaire empire, with the biggest guns, you can pass laws that aren't universally preferable.

Originally posted by ilikecomics
Explain to me in the simplest way possible what you think free trade is. Im not sure you have the right definition.

Free trade is the concept of not having quotas, tariffs or other barriers in the trade between two economies. This could be some absolute free trade, where there is no rules at all governing the trade, but in practice that does not and has never existed, so free trade in modern political usage refers to the decrease in trade barriers (for example the lifting of quotas and tariffs for certain industries)

Originally posted by Artol
Free trade is the concept of not having quotas, tariffs or other barriers in the trade between two economies. This could be some absolute free trade, where there is no rules at all governing the trade, but in practice that does not and has never existed, so free trade in modern political usage refers to the decrease in trade barriers (for example the lifting of quotas and tariffs for certain industries)

I disagree because the specificity. Free trade is two parties trading, that's it.

Ok, I mean that’s certainly not how it is used in politics, economics or the media though. But if it just means trade generally to you, we can work on that basis, I guess.

Originally posted by Artol
Ok, I mean that’s certainly not how it is used in politics, economics or the media though. But if it just means trade generally to you, we can work on that basis, I guess.

In what world is free trade not what I'm describing ?

https://mises.org/wire/uss-free-trade-isnt-very-free

Do you disagree with me that that politicians, economists and news media use the term “free trade” differently from how you are using it?

You two seem to be having a strange disagreement.

It's like if you were to travel a long distance to meet one another and ask how you got there and one of you says "car" and the other says "no you didn't, you drove here".

One is a mechanism that enables driving and the other is the act of driving.

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
You two seem to be having a strange disagreement.

It's like if you were to travel a long distance to meet one another and ask how you got there and one of you says "car" and the other says "no you didn't, you drove here".

One is a mechanism that enables driving and the other is the act of driving.

Perhaps, it seems less important to me than some of the other points we discussed. I think our main disagreement in reality is that ilikecomics thinks that free trade is always a good, and I believe that guided and limited trade can lead to better economic and social outcomes.