alt Hacker NewsThe craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out. Even without El Nino or climate change, that's a hazardous location. Do not ask for my insurance or tax dollars to (literally) bail you out!
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Lots of areas have natural hazards. Should we help out people hit by tornadoes or floods?
With climate change induced problems, at least there’s some justification. We collectively (as a country… you and I personally might not have been alive or voting when the mistake was made) failed to elect governments that would prevent it, so we we collectively get to pay for it.
If they might convince some fool to do it, they’d be fools not too eh?
That’s a lot of money!
“You think the people [who own houses by the beach] aren’t just going to sell their homes and move?”
>The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out.
This should surprise nobody.
Take a step back and look at the voting patterns of coastal communities. The ones in CA might disagree with the ones in NC about guns and abortion and what values ought to be taught in schools but at the end of the day these people's core belief seems to be that the government should (with the resources it has taken from others via coercion) "do things" and so of course it follows that the government should bail them out, however unfair it may be to those who have to pay for it.
Why shouldn’t insurance cover it if it’s in their policy?
Good news, insurance companies are running for the exits on locations increasingly at risk. Homeowners are left screaming in fear of losing their homes after they realised insurance companies can just refuse to offer insurance after just 1 year. Even new homeowners desperate for a home are realising after they bought a new home in a floodplain, it turned out that developers/government tricked them into buying a massive liability where in a few years their million dollar asset becomes nearly worthless.
Bad news, neoliberal governments (even in Australia) are responding to this with socialising the risk via government insurance where rest of population who picked low-risk locations will still have to cover the high risk homes. Oh, and the government are still approving new homes in high-risk areas instead of increasing denisification of low-risk areas close to cities.
It's really painful to watch all this play out slowly.