ORCHID WATKINS – Tallahassee, FL, USA

Before I respond to this preview edition question, I would like to explain what “Ask B3T” is (and isn’t). I’ll try to keep the yap session brief.

When I came up with the idea for “Ask B3T,” I wanted to create a two-way form of communication between us (publisher, editors, contributors, etc.) and you, the reader. While some of us may have experience or knowledge in the areas in which you may ask about, no one on this earth can answer subjective or hypothetical questions in a definitive manner (though I hope you all knew that already.)

You should see a button that says “submit a question” at the top of your screen, that is if WordPress hasn’t ruined my formatting. If you click on that button, it will take you to a google form for you to submit your very own question, including picking a target respondent, though we make no guarantees that your question will be answered exactly the way you want (sorry!)

Questions that are about our thoughts on any of a variety of topics, concepts, or aspects of art, politics, economics, society, or some combination of those are most likely to be picked. I.e. we aren’t likely to answer questions that have easily researchable, singular answers.

Now that that’s out of the way, for this preview edition of Better Than The Times, I will be answering a question submitted by our publisher (a bit of a reverse of our demo interview.)

Ask B3T:

“If the United States instituted both a UBI of say $500 per month per person in America, plus a $500 per household housing stipend AND a reparations payment of $1,000,000 per person who could document they descended from enslaved people, or at least prove their family had been in the United States prior to 1865, paid out over 20 years, and a $100,000 paid out over 5 yrs. to all other non white persons living in the United states, and we paid for it with a special assessment that was divided as an equal percentage on income, say a 10% tax (or whatever would be needed) what would the tax burden be on the average working family (typical income $75,000)”

Anthony Watkins – Tallahassee, FL, USA

Dear Anthony Watkins,

I understand that you want me to do some research and some math and give you a number, but that’s not quite my style or my take on this concept.

Sure we could raise taxes to cover the badly needed social and economic programs that the U.S. has so far failed to deliver on, but I don’t think that it would be necessary. Maybe we should do something a bit more like the big dogs on wall street and just move the same money around to get better results?

Whenever I think of the budgets of every level of jurisdiction in the United States, I can’t help but think of the below tweet from twitter user @dril:

Think of all the necessities on that list as things that benefit the public, like education, healthcare subsidies, grants for social services, etc., and candles are, well, law enforcement and defense (sorry to all our candle readers, this is just an analogy!)

1/6th of the federal budget is spent on defense, 1/20th of NYC’s budget is spent on the NYPD, and 15% of Tallahassee’s 200-million-dollar budget is spent on policing (also, over $400,000 is allocated to “golf,” (???) literally, the least amount of fun per sq. ft. and by far the worst urban land use, golfers do NOT interact.) These figures don’t even include the sums of money used in the rest of the criminal legal system, including incarceration. (y’all should read “The Abolition of Law” by Nevada (pdf linked), I don’t think I agree with it a thousand percent but it’s very interesting.) ANYWAY, back to my point. We spend inconceivable amounts of money on the systems that continue the legacy of slavery, racism, colonialism, and economic injustice to this day! How can we continue to fund those systems and new services to try and restore priceless things like: lives, safety, dignity, and self-determination that we are still doing our damndest to keep destroying? maybe lets take some of the “doing evil” money and put it in the “doing good,” pile (it’s all much more shades of grey but a little exaggeration never hurt anybody.)

I know this is “Ask B3T,” and it would be so simple to just say “for a white family of four making $75,000, their tax burden would be X%,” and I could have found that number out within the time it has taken for me to respond, but what good does a number provide as an answer for a question that, to me, isn’t quite the one that needs to be asked.

Anyway, what do I know, I’m just some communist-adjacent college student. Thanks for your question!

Your parasocial bestie (and the inquirers real-life daughter),

Orchid (she/her) – Editor in Chief