Natural Disasters: Where do we get the money to repair damage they cause?

The economic consequences of natural disasters are far more dangerous than the disaster itself.

There have been so many natural disasters over the past couple years. What troubles me is not the disasters themselves but the financial shockwaves it will send through our economy.

My question is: If the US is in trillion dollar debt, on the verge of murdering the dollar, where do we get the money to repair the damage from these disasters?

If we see a massive earthquake in San Francisco how do we fund the repair efforts? Theres very little money to go around already and we cant print much more without massive inflation. So who pays for the workers to clean up? Who pays for them to rebuild? Who pays for the building materials? Where is this money going to come from?

This question suggests an end to the monetary system itself. It does not support us anymore, cannot protect us from disasters like this. In fact, because we need MONEY to rebuild this hypothetical San Francisco that rebuilding will never get done. Even if there are plenty of people willing to do it! We still need money for mortar, money for steel, money for hammers and nails, etc.

Money makes natural disasters EVEN MORE DANGEROUS. The social consequences of a natural disaster will be riots, crime and so on. Possibly even martial law to combat this. There's money to pay blue uniformed shock troops to maintain order but no money to rebuild the cities.

New Orleans is still suffering. Haiti is still suffering. India is still suffering. Japan is still suffering.

Our supply lines are also in grave danger from natural disasters. One kink in the supply line and many people in many towns will not have food to buy, water to drink and so on. Our economy is so fragile because we're so interconnected and dependent on one another that any major natural disaster is not only a tragic loss of life but an almost definite loss of our financial stability.

To me, it seems like we're only one natural disaster away from complete financial devastation.

This isnt a doomy gloomy thread. Its a solution thread.

Anyone have any bright ideas? We're gonna need em.

Originally posted by doctornamtab
My question is: If the US is in trillion dollar debt, on the verge of murdering the dollar, where do we get the money to repair the damage from these disasters?

The whole debt thing is not new, the US has been in debt for a long time, they were in debt before Katrina, where do they get money to fix things? The federal reserve money printing machines, do you still believe paper money has any backing, gold, silver etc.. nope just paper. We are just one disaster away from more money being printed and a higher debt ceiling.

Originally posted by mileslong54

Originally posted by doctornamtab
My question is: If the US is in trillion dollar debt, on the verge of murdering the dollar, where do we get the money to repair the damage from these disasters?

The whole debt thing is not new, the US has been in debt for a long time, they were in debt before Katrina, where do they get money to fix things? The federal reserve money printing machines, do you still believe paper money has any backing, gold, silver etc.. nope just paper. We are just one disaster away from more money being printed and a higher debt ceiling.

But the problem is printing more money makes the existing money worth less. Supply and demand works with currency itself too. The more of something there is the less valuable it is. Capitalism is based on scarcity, not logic. So abundance of money leads to the devaluation of money.

So we cant just print much more without even worse economic consequences.