Ron wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Larry Bud) wrote:

While I hope everybody is well after the pounding Florida took again,
I have to wonder why we put up with the Federal Government paying for
natural disasters that occur year after year. If you can't afford
the proper insurance for the disasters that hit your area, MOVE.

We all know Florida and the Carolinas get hammered by hurricanes,
California has earthquates and forest fires, Oklahoma has tornados,
and those who live in a flood plane of a river get floods, and those
who live at the base of a volcano get covered in lava, yet tax payers
are forced to reimburse those people who CONTINUE to rebuild in the
exact same spot time after time, knowing those places will get hit
again in the future. Frankly, I'm tired of it.

Larry is correct in part, and the part he is correct in is the important
part because it's the publicly unrecognized one. Fed disaster relief
catches a lot of votes for the politicians involved all the way up the
chain(and avoids vote losses if they were to speak sanely like Larry).
The politics of disaster keeps the incorrect economic incentives in
place. That's really no different than the way we fund public education
however, in that the baby makers aren't 100% responsible for the costs,
so they make too many babies. Come to think of it, I'd be surprised if
the average person would incur 50% of the educ. costs if they had
another child. The burden of disaster costs and its influence on
location decisions might be angelic by public educ. standards.


But you miss the whole point of government. It's to share costs for
the public good, which includes education of the young. Do you want to
live in a society that fails to educate its young? Do you want to live
in a society which fails to plan for public health crises such as
pandemics? To you want to live in a society in which it is every man
for himself? What happens to those who can't defend themselves, such
as the young, the elderly, the infirm?