You mean the government could be rewarding bad behavior? How could this be?
Why Americans are flocking to their sinking shores even as the risks mount
Once you get through the golwball warmening angle (I really don’t mind the part bashing around of Huckabee), you get to the juicy part.
Federal disaster recovery assistance has exceeded $124 billion since 2004, according to a May 2014 study by the Congressional Research Service, mostly for damages caused by hurricanes.
And many of the houses, condominiums and resorts that line the storm-battered beach are covered by federal flood insurance, a subsidized program that took up the slack when private insurers fled the state after Hurricane Andrew inflicted huge losses in 1992. Florida is the program’s top customer among states. It has two million policies, many of them charging below-market rates, insuring $484 billion in property.
All that money creates what many people familiar with Florida’s predicament characterize as a costly – and dangerous – system of socialized risk to indulge beach lovers. “It’s an unsustainable model that encourages development and leaves people in harm’s way,†said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based nonprofit budget watchdog.
If only the government could see what any other thinking individual in the insurance industry could see: Without the government’s help, no one would build anything in these locations.
Just like OPIC encourages business to offshore their manufacturing outside our borders, federal property insurers encourage “developers” and “investors” to build in areas they would otherwise run away from with their hair on fire.
Just the rish soaking the system.