RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Hurricane Katrina

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the G-man said:
Speaking of unintended consequences...<P>An Economics Professor tells <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167790,00.html">Fox News</a> that federal aid for disaster ravaged areas is unconstitutional and actually causes more deaths:<P><blockquote><I>..if we look at Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution — and I encourage all Americans to look at that before we start opening up our tax coffers to pay for all of this — we have every obligation to provide for New Orleans in terms of charity, private charity from one person to the other.<P>But the founding fathers never intended...to provide one dollar of taxpayer dollars to pay for any disaster or anything that we might call charity.<P>What we now have is the law of unintended consequences taking place, where FEMA has come into New Orleans, a place where, ecologically, it makes no sense to have levees keeping the Mississippi River from flooding into New Orleans, like it naturally should.<P>Now with FEMA bailing out Louisiana, bailing out Florida and lowering the overall cost of living in these places, we have people with no incentive to leave. And the law of unintended consequences means that more people are dying with every one of these storms. They're becoming more and more expensive, more and more property loss, just because the federal government has violated the Constitution to provide for these funds.</I></blockquote><P>It's an interesting viewpoint and, given that, more often than not, the free market approach tends to be proven the correct one over time, it is possible the Professor is correct that less, not more, federal aid will save lives in the long run.

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