Anyone who has previously read my columns will quickly conclude that I believe reparations (as being currently discussed) are a tragically stupid idea. You have probably read a multitude of opinions telling you why that is so. You are about to get a significantly different take on the issue.

The first aspect comes from my reading of a novel years back which I believe is The Winner by David Baldacci. It is combined with my personal and concurrent experience. Remember a good novel often has a significant basis in fact.

The premise concerns a genius criminal who figured out how to fix the Powerball lottery. He realizes that if he fixed it for himself, he would soon get caught. He also realized that the vast majority of people who buy lottery tickets are financial underachievers, so to speak. He would hand-pick someone from that underachieving population and create a deal with them. He would rig the lottery so the person would win and then the person would turn the money over to him to manage, ultimately splitting the monies 50/50. That is basically how the story goes until a smart detective comes on the scene.

The smart detective noticed a pattern that there were these people who would win the lottery and retain their wealth many years later. Here is the true part: that just does not happen. Nearly all people who win these sums — unless it is the mega multi-million-dollar winners — have little winnings left in just a few years or less.

Every friend and relative comes out of every sinkhole to gladhand for money. Every con artist in the world surrounds them to separate them from their money. These “winners” are generally people who do not have a trusted financial advisor to protect them from the wolves and they have no means of determining who they should turn to as a trusted advisor. I have experienced people with money not knowing who to turn to. This part of the plot line was so true to me.

I had someone who was referred to me who had won $350,000 in the lottery. He came too late. By the time he came to me, he had invested almost all the monies: He bought public pay phones. This was right after I had gone to my annual continuing education class at the usual location. They always had an alcove packed with wall pay phones. When I arrived that year, I found the pay phones were all gone as no one was using them any longer. My thought was what a sucker this person was to put his money into this investment and why had he not come to me six months earlier so I could save him from himself.

For my money, the same likely outcome applies to reparations. You drop the kind of dough the reparations people are proposing for some Californians; and, considering their background in financial affairs, five years later for most of them it will all have gone poof.

If the recipients of reparations are not financial underachievers, then why would they be recipients of funds; obviously they have not been harmed by the perceived grievances. They have systems in place to protect their wealth with qualified and reliable personnel.

The amounts that are being talked about are just numbers that are being thrown around for attention. They are stalking horses for the real numbers which will be significantly reduced. Politicians can then say, “See how good we are? We cut those crazy numbers in half, a third or whatever.” The real answer should be “No, we are not committing taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to this travesty.” That will not happen.

In addition, I believe this will just be the beginning. Different groups will come from all over fully sold on their rationale that they should be recompensed. A group is already stating they deserve money for the land that sits under Dodger Stadium. Without the building of Dodger Stadium on that site the land would be of little value.

Members of Congress led by Cori Bush have proposed $14 trillion for reparations as if it were a trivial amount.

For my money, there are three simple solutions to the conditions plaguing blacks in California as there are across the country:

1. Stop having 80% of children outside of marriage. Put a premium on fathers.

2. Rid the black community of the racist public school systems controlled by the racist teachers’ unions. Give them universal school choice.

3. Stop telling them they are victims. I grew up in a disadvantaged household and my mother never told us or permitted us to have a victim mentality. If you keep telling people they should believe they are victims, they will ultimately believe it.

Reparations will only reinforce in their minds that victim mentality. That is what the proposers of these plans want so as to achieve perpetual power over them. These proposals are as bad as they get for the reasons above, and a good deal more.

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This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.