The 40-acre land grants themselves afford another route for calculating the size of a potential black reparations bill. The conventional interpretation has it that the promised allocations were to have gone to households comprised of those newly emancipated. If a typical household consisted of four persons, the allocation would have amounted to 10 acres per person. With 4 million emancipated persons at the close of the Civil War, the overall distribution of land to the formerly enslaved would have come to at least With 4 million emancipated persons at the close of the Civil War, the overall distribution of land to the formerly enslaved would have come to at least 40 million acres. 40 million acres. With an average value of an acre of land set at $10 in 1865,7 the overall value of the allocation would have been $400 million. The present value compounded at a 6-percent interest rate (the average rate of return plus an inflation adjustment) amounts to $3.1 trillion. Financial expert John Talbott has suggested computing a present value predicated upon a 9-percent interest rate, consistent with the average return on an investment in the US stock market from 1870 to 2020. This results in an estimated reparations bill of $16.5 trillion.

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