No one's paid to rebuild the Twin Towers. They will NOT be rebuilt. SF was rebuilt by the residents. Florida is being rebuilt by the insurance companies, who won't be writing any new policies down there, instead the state will have to underwrite insurance.
While the Twin Towers are not being rebuilt, they are going to be building something on the site and I am sure plenty of both public and private money will be used, same as in New Orleans, and in San Francisco.
As for SF, the city was rebuilt mostly due to favorable loans made by such local individuals as A.P. Giannini, who gave low interest loans to city residents so they could rebuild. Which is my point. The people who live there actually are pretty willing to do the work necessary to live where they want to live, if given the financial wherewithal to do so, same as the people of New Orleans.
Anyone can live anywhere they damn well want to, as long as they're willing to accept the consequences. Some places are more dangerous than others, and some represent an unjustifiable risk. That risk should not be subsidized by other taxpayers. If people want to live in places that risky, that should be on their dime. I don't know how to make this any clearer.
What, exactly, is your point? So it is harder to live at times in New Orleans. This country has always stepped up to help communities hit by catastrophe's. Because you disagree with where New Orleans is located does not separate it from its importance to the region or the country and we all have a vested interest in helping them get back to respectibility, just like anywhere else.
The ties you refer to are emotional. So what? No one rebuilt Pompei, they weren't crazy enough to build near a Volcano after that!
Oh brother!!! Up to now I thought you had a clue and now you just blew your logic completely out the window.
No, they did not rebuild Pompei, which was under abount twenty feet of lava; same as Herculaneum, which was a beach resort back in 79 AD, but is now 2 kilometers from the Bay of Naples and fifty to sixty feet under the current city of Herculaneum. Because, Rick, they certainly
DID rebuild over the destroyed cities, to the point that now development completely encircles Mount Vesuvius to the west, and vineyards and farms cover the sides of the mountain itself. Try understanding that the current area supports roughly two million crazy people living in the shadow of an active volcano.
Good example, though, and thanks for bringing it up.
The cost of absorbing the people from NO into other areas, virtually nil. These people will support the local economies they move to, provide support for rents, labor for jobs, etc. Cajun food in Seattle, why not! As long as they're distributed evenly accross the country, it would be a net gain for every community they move to.
You have no way of knowing what kind of impact these people will have on the areas to which they move, but you certainly can understand that the immediate impact will
HAVE to be a drain, because they are not working right now, are they? It takes time to become acclimated to new surroundings, while all their lifestyle connections are still all back in New Orleans. To say the cost of absorbing these people is nil is total nonsense.
And Seattle already has Cajun food.
It isn't my problem and it isn't yours either. It is your choice to make it one, but I'm not impressed by your arguments at all. The standard of living I was refering to was that of the people NOT directly impacted by the hurricane. Like you and me. The issue of employment and price stability is everyone's problem and is primarilly effected by the policies put in place by your government. But your government isn't interested in these things, or they wouldn't allow our manufactuiring base to be closed down.Â
That is just wrong on so many levels, if you don't "get" it, you certainly are not going to understand why this burden is on all of us to share. New Orleans has too much importance to the nation for it not to be a problem for me as well as for you. We do need to see the city bounce back, right where it is. It is important to secure its safety so future hurricanes never devastate it again. And if you do not understand why, then let me address your next point:
By the way, the Philadelphia area contributes a good deal more to the national economy than NO ever did. But Philly will never be destroyed so thoroughly by a natural disaster. And if it was, I wouldn't expect or want help from all over the country, I'm sure we could handle it.
Okay, Rick, try to absorb this- I found this article from the Washington Post and it puts the affect of the loss economy of New Orleans to the Nation in a very clear perspective:
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Page A01
The effects of the monster storm that devastated the Gulf Coast spread through the nation's economy yesterday, disrupting shipping and rail networks and sending prices for lumber, coffee and other commodities soaring.
Hurricane Katrina is likely to drag down U.S. economic growth in the months ahead, analysts said, threatening what has been a robust expansion.
Katrina's economic effects may be more lasting than those that usually follow big storms, economists and businesspeople said yesterday, owing to the severity of the damage and the unique geography of the New Orleans region. The storm hit a chokepoint in the U.S. economy -- a concentration of ports, rail lines, barge traffic and major highways making up one of the nation's major trade hubs.
New Orleans is underwater, and its future is uncertain -- as is that of the $49 billion in goods, 60 percent of U.S. grain exports, and 26 percent of the nation's natural gas supply and crude oil that flow through nearby ports each year.
"The Mississippi River is the aorta of the American economy, and New Orleans is the access point to it," said Al DeLattre, a supply-chain specialist with consulting firm Accenture Ltd.
In an attempt to fend off disruptions to the nation's fuel supply resulting from the storm, President Bush yesterday moved to release at least 1 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 700 million-barrel emergency stockpile. Oil prices fell slightly yesterday on the news.
Signs emerged yesterday of the havoc the storm wreaked on the companies and transportation lines that supply the nation, with dozens of firms disclosing the scope of damages at facilities near the Gulf of Mexico or simply stating they could not yet say what that scope might be.
Union Carbide Corp. officials could not even get to their chemicals plant in Hahnville, La., the firm said yesterday, and it will probably take weeks to resume operations there. Chiquita Brands International Inc. reported severe damage at the Gulfport, Miss., facility where it stores one-fourth of the bananas it imports from Central America.
Yellow Roadway Corp., one of the nation's largest trucking companies, has 20 trucking terminals in the area affected by the storm, some of which may have been destroyed, chief executive William D. Zollars said yesterday. With major bridges near New Orleans damaged, the company is routing trucks hours out of their way.
Rail carriers Norfolk Southern Corp., Union Pacific Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. have all stopped freight traffic into the afflicted area. And shipping experts said it is hard to predict how long it will take the Port of New Orleans and other nearby ports to reopen, given that they may need to dredge new channels and make major repairs. Efforts to reach officials of the Port of New Orleans were unsuccessful yesterday.
"I don't think there is any historical precedent for an incident of this scale," said C. James Kruse, director of the Center for Ports and Waterways at the Texas Transportation Institute.
The damage might even be felt at the breakfast table. New Orleans warehouses hold about a quarter of the nation's raw coffee, 211 million pounds. Concerns that importers will have difficulty rerouting coffee shipments and that large amounts of inventory have been lost pushed the price of coffee for December delivery up to $1.01 a pound yesterday on the New York Board of Trade, an increase of more than 3 cents, after gains Monday and Tuesday.
Let us all know how the affect on the Nation's economy compares to New Orleans if suddenly the rest of us were denied our daily Philly Cheesesteak, okay Rick? And frankly, you are delusional if you think the people of Philadelphia could handle something like Katrina if it struck you the same way as it did New Orleans. I am from Philadelphia, and the most likely outcome of a disaster like this on Philly would be mass murders, looting and the total destruction of any building still standing. So I would agree that no one in their right minds would even venture near the place to try to help for fear of their own safety.
