Although current calls to pay reparations to African Americans for the legacy of slavery are justified, we still need to think more carefully about how best to pay reparations and what to do about the fact that capitalism created slavery in the first place, rather than vice versa. For example, even if the U.S. government paid reparations for slavery in $10-12 trillion of cash, homes, or bonds, African Americans would still suffer a new wealth gap within 30-40 years so long as almost all of the U.S. stock market belongs to a small number of White Americans and foreign investors. Nor do reparations for slavery address how capitalism historically exploited, and continues to exploit, countless White people, women of all colors, Latin Americans, and Native Americans.
Furthermore, reparations for Native Americans are complex because capitalism drove the land grabs that dispossessed them of an entire continent, yet for cultural and spiritual reasons many Native Americans would rather have their land back than receive monetary compensation. Still, as a thought experiment, if we were to calculate the total dollar cost of paying reparations for all lands that were unfairly taken from American Indians plus fair compensation for all epidemics, wars, broken treaties, oppression, unpaid rents on stolen property, and reasonable dividends on wealth extracted from all water, mineral, and oil rights in the United States—the final debt is likely so large as to be unpayable.
These considerations highlight the fact that we need reparations for capitalism just as much as we need reparations for structural racism, and baby stocks would be those universal reparations for capitalism. Voters could choose to augment baby stocks with more specific reparations for other issues if they can agree to do so—but if they cannot then at least baby stocks would dramatically improve the bottom line for 90% of U.S. citizens, and benefit up to 99%. For this reason, Table 3 lists some key think tanks, websites, and journals that should write about the concept of baby stocks but have not yet done so. I have to say that, from my perspective as a doctor, it looks like an unethical conflict of interest when editors and authors invest in stocks via the index funds in their retirement accounts and then publish articles on reducing wealth inequality that omit the extensive evidence that supports baby stocks. The American people deserve more financial transparency about how to solve wealth and health inequities.
Table 3. Who Has Discussed Baby Stocks?
NO
New England Journal of Medicine
YES
Lenore Palladino (2019)
Michael Miovic (2023)
Nir Kaissar (2023)