What a ridiculous mess, and it is all the fault of government intervention into the market.
First, government creates moral hazard by providing flood insurance for structures built in places where private insurance would be either unobtainable or prohibitively expensive. Oh my, how wonderfully compassionate!
But this encourages people to build in areas where they shouldn’t. Each time a building is damaged or destroyed by flood, taxpayers get stuck with the bill. And when something like Sandy comes along, we all get to help pay for a buyout, the existence of which constitutes an admission on the part of government that this whole scam was a bad idea in the first place.
Then government makes more rules under which even people who could afford to pay losses out-of-pocket will be prohibited from building what they want where they want.
What a testament to the economic ignorance of Americans that politicians continue to get away with this nonsense.
What a ridiculous mess, and it is all the fault of government intervention into the market.
First, government creates moral hazard by providing flood insurance for structures built in places where private insurance would be either unobtainable or prohibitively expensive. Oh my, how wonderfully compassionate!
But this encourages people to build in areas where they shouldn’t. Each time a building is damaged or destroyed by flood, taxpayers get stuck with the bill. And when something like Sandy comes along, we all get to help pay for a buyout, the existence of which constitutes an admission on the part of government that this whole scam was a bad idea in the first place.
Then government makes more rules under which even people who could afford to pay losses out-of-pocket will be prohibited from building what they want where they want.
What a testament to the economic ignorance of Americans that politicians continue to get away with this nonsense.