> The Biden administration has requested $12 billion in additional disaster response funding — but only if they also get $24 billion in new spending on Ukraine.
Note that the Politico link here is to a story from last year -- this probably doesn't apply to the recent issues. (Though there may well be something analogous happening.)
Very controversial take, and please keep in mind that I'm simplifying for a blog comment and my full position is much more nuanced and understanding of tradeoffs, but
> After giving billions of dollars to illegal migrants, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says FEMA is tapped — they will only provide “critical response efforts” and will not support rebuilding of the affected areas.
In a general, high level, abstract sense, this is the correct thing to do.
_All else equal_, it is not a good use of money to rebuild homes in hurricane zones. As much as possible, homes should be rebuilt in places where it is _less_ likely that those homes will get hurricained again
All else is not equal and in real life it never is; if we follow your guidance on places like Asheville we'd have to write off half basically the entire Atlantic coast and Appalachia entirely.
I'm saying more like, if we wrote those places off the first time a major hurricane happened, like a hundred years ago, there would be a lot fewer future hurricane victims.
I am keenly aware of the fact that this is grossly unrealistic in the real world. I'm only speaking in abstract hypotheticals. Or, more concretely, "all else equal" all else is rarely equal.
That’s like saying, “if we have less kids, we’ll have less cancer”. There are definitely cases where government subsidizes poor home location too much. This is not one of them.
> The Biden administration has requested $12 billion in additional disaster response funding — but only if they also get $24 billion in new spending on Ukraine.
Note that the Politico link here is to a story from last year -- this probably doesn't apply to the recent issues. (Though there may well be something analogous happening.)
good catch! will edit
Very controversial take, and please keep in mind that I'm simplifying for a blog comment and my full position is much more nuanced and understanding of tradeoffs, but
> After giving billions of dollars to illegal migrants, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says FEMA is tapped — they will only provide “critical response efforts” and will not support rebuilding of the affected areas.
In a general, high level, abstract sense, this is the correct thing to do.
_All else equal_, it is not a good use of money to rebuild homes in hurricane zones. As much as possible, homes should be rebuilt in places where it is _less_ likely that those homes will get hurricained again
All else is not equal and in real life it never is; if we follow your guidance on places like Asheville we'd have to write off half basically the entire Atlantic coast and Appalachia entirely.
I'm saying more like, if we wrote those places off the first time a major hurricane happened, like a hundred years ago, there would be a lot fewer future hurricane victims.
I am keenly aware of the fact that this is grossly unrealistic in the real world. I'm only speaking in abstract hypotheticals. Or, more concretely, "all else equal" all else is rarely equal.
That’s like saying, “if we have less kids, we’ll have less cancer”. There are definitely cases where government subsidizes poor home location too much. This is not one of them.
> This is not one of them.
I didn't say this was one of them. I specifically said "in general, at a high level abstract sense".