Especially now, it's important to remind ourselves that American slavery isn't a thing of the the distant past - there are old people alive today whose fathers literally fought in the war to keep slavery legal. And the last former slave died in 1971 [1], which means there are probably tons of middle-aged people going about their lives who personally knew and had conversations with ex-slaves.
I'd also point out that while slavery may have supposedly ended after the civil war, crimes were created and applied selectively to black people.
Combined with racial violence, sharecropping that kept black people in constant debt, and other policies, many black people were still forced to labor against their will.
Even now, prison labor is still regularly exploited. For example, low level offenders in California are a big part of the fire fighters that fight wildfires, but they are paid below minimum wage (like a dollar an hour), and then, despite that training, they typically can't work as firefighters after release because of their criminal history.
"Samuel James Seymour (March 28, 1860 – April 12, 1956) was the last surviving person who had been in Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. "
"Two months before his death, Seymour[4] appeared on the February 9, 1956, broadcast of the CBS TV panel show I've Got a Secret."
I would be curious to find out how many Americans today have ancestors who lived in America during Civil war. Even more detailed question is with percentages cohorts based on how many ancestors were in America vs somewhere else during that time.
A friend of a friend married his carer or nurse instead of paying her wages. He was not expecting to live long and needed 24/7 care.
It was agreed that she would be written out of the will, so his children got all the inheritance which was not diluted due to years of a full time carer. She got a lifetimes worth of pension payments, in exchange for a few years work (and forgoing other romantic relationships). She lived with him so I assume her living expenses were covered.
Risky for both sides, she could contest the will or the pension provider could find a loophole or accuse her of fraud.
My uncle got engaged to his carer when he had cancer, but he thought it was genuine love even though she was 20 years younger. He wound up recovering and she dumped him, and then he fell into alcoholism for a year. He did eventually pull himself out of the hole and lived another 15 years before another cancer got him.
One aspect of this that doesn't seem to be getting much attention is the law of unintended consequences. It's easy to contribute other people's money to an inarguably noble cause, but I wonder how many of the authors of the budget that set aside these funds appreciated that their great great great great great grandchildren, many of them _descendants of slaves_, would be paying for this benefit?
As long as pensions aren’t inflation adjusted and we have near-constant low level inflation, it’s just not a big deal. This article is about an approximately $1000/year benefit received by a single person. It’s an extreme outlier and its cost is many orders of magnitude from being even a rounding error.
To your question, though, designers of pension funds definitely do understand that pensions which survive the original recipient can start to look like perpetuities.
The headline is a bit weirdly qualified. “X-War-Era” usually refers to something from the time of but not directly associated with the war. This is, in fact, a Civil War pension.
How is such a pension delivered? A direct deposit? Is there somewhere in an interface or a check where the words “Civil War pension” would be displayed?
Agreed, I think this is such a good reminder that slavery wasn't that long ago. There are many people alive today who grew up under legal segregation. In fact, it's not hard to see how today's modern Republican Party grew out of the "Southern Strategy" of the late 60s.
There are many people alive today who grew up under legal segregation
Legal segregation never went away, it's just not necessarily Plessy v. Ferguson obvious anymore.
There was a great episode of Why is this Happening about two years ago with Nikole Hannah-Jones, who you might know as the NYT's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist behind the 1619 Project, that covered this topic: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/investigating-school-s...
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Sidebar: if you haven't seen Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project, now is the perfect time to familiarize yourself with it.
The Democratic Party used to be the party of the south/segregation. What year (or decade) is the point where the two parties flipped places on this issue?
That's a lie and always has been. The South was strongly Democrat until after Reagan (who won 49 states by the way, and basically created the modern Republican party), well into the 90s, as evidenced by Clinton and Gore, both southern Democrats. Sorry, the attempt to pin the party "flip" on Civil rights is bogus.
[+] [-] rrrrrrrrrrrryan|5 years ago|reply
Especially now, it's important to remind ourselves that American slavery isn't a thing of the the distant past - there are old people alive today whose fathers literally fought in the war to keep slavery legal. And the last former slave died in 1971 [1], which means there are probably tons of middle-aged people going about their lives who personally knew and had conversations with ex-slaves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Magee
[+] [-] lsiebert|5 years ago|reply
Combined with racial violence, sharecropping that kept black people in constant debt, and other policies, many black people were still forced to labor against their will.
Even now, prison labor is still regularly exploited. For example, low level offenders in California are a big part of the fire fighters that fight wildfires, but they are paid below minimum wage (like a dollar an hour), and then, despite that training, they typically can't work as firefighters after release because of their criminal history.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/california-is-paying-inmates...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4928680/Haunting-pi... https://theconversation.com/exploiting-black-labor-after-the... https://listverse.com/2017/06/21/10-ways-american-slavery-co...
[+] [-] danieltillett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrBazza|5 years ago|reply
"Samuel James Seymour (March 28, 1860 – April 12, 1956) was the last surviving person who had been in Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. "
"Two months before his death, Seymour[4] appeared on the February 9, 1956, broadcast of the CBS TV panel show I've Got a Secret."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_J._Seymour
[+] [-] lsh123|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] teruakohatu|5 years ago|reply
It was agreed that she would be written out of the will, so his children got all the inheritance which was not diluted due to years of a full time carer. She got a lifetimes worth of pension payments, in exchange for a few years work (and forgoing other romantic relationships). She lived with him so I assume her living expenses were covered.
Risky for both sides, she could contest the will or the pension provider could find a loophole or accuse her of fraud.
[+] [-] seibelj|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwawaygh|5 years ago|reply
To your question, though, designers of pension funds definitely do understand that pensions which survive the original recipient can start to look like perpetuities.
[+] [-] stormdennis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bishnu|5 years ago|reply
It seems like a lot of elderly men in the late 1800s/early 1900s married younger women to essentially be caregivers.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flomo|5 years ago|reply
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/civil-war-ve...
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[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|5 years ago|reply
Legal segregation never went away, it's just not necessarily Plessy v. Ferguson obvious anymore.
There was a great episode of Why is this Happening about two years ago with Nikole Hannah-Jones, who you might know as the NYT's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist behind the 1619 Project, that covered this topic: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/investigating-school-s...
----
Sidebar: if you haven't seen Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project, now is the perfect time to familiarize yourself with it.
Here's the main site: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619...
And here is the incredible podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.htm... — if you only have time to listen to one episode, try the third one, "The Birth of American Music".
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