Posted on 08/14/2004 9:35:01 AM PDT by technomage
An interesting conversation was on Fox News this morning. Stuart Varney (sp) mentioned that for the two months after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida the National GDP actually dropped. Then, when recovery efforts really kicked in, the national economy benefited. Many feel this drop was one of the reasons Bush I lost the election.
The monetary costs of Charley will probably get close to, or exceed, the 27 billion dollar price tag of Andrew. This may cause the national economy to stall before the rebuilding efforts start in earnest and trickle into the economy. Might not be soon enough.
Why not?
After all, it was Bush's fault!!
Quite the opposite. W. and Jeb will ride to the rescue. Kerry can't go there, he'll look like he's pandering.
I sure hope not, but it seems that Pres. Bush can't catch a real break.
One thing is the shortage of building supplies in the US right now. Concrete prices are way up, rebar, lumber, everything. Lots of these supplies are being diverted to China and Iraq.
Clinton wasn't impeached for "feeling up" Monica, because he had done such a fantastic job of feeling our pain.
I agree that some of Perot voters were conservative leaning but a 'huge majority'? Of that I'm not sure..... The following is one study that looks at the numbers on a state by state basis [electoral college] .....
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:jq4Mf-RusPgJ:www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm++perot+clinton+bush&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
What the heck are you people talking about!!!!!!
Norway babes v USA babes.
Been away from the the news a while?
The notion that a hurricane helps the economy is a variation of the classic "broken window fallacy": A broken window increases the wealth of the whole community because it provides employment for the police, the social worker, the glazier, and the insurance agent.
Natural disasters make the population as a whole poorer, and they make every individual poorer except the people who benefit directly from the funding of the recovery.
From what I'm seeing on local and national news, it looks like Charley will do more damage than Andrew simply because of the scope of the storm. Andrew was small compared to Charley and while it did incredible damage to the Homestead/Florida City/Naranja area, the vast destruction was pretty much kept to those areas.
Charley was larger, went through the state across heavily populated areas. So far the confirmed death toll is the same as the "official" Andrew toll from the actual storm.
That is true. But that is the broken window fallacy. Let's say you have a window and S100 that you were planning to spend on a CD player.
The hurricane comes along and smashes your window, which will cost $100 to replace. True, the window guy makes $100, so it appears to be an economic benefit. But the audio equipment retailer is out the $100, although he may not know it because he didn't know you were planning to by the CD player. But his loss is real nonetheless.
Meanwhile, you are poorer because before the hurricane you would have had a window and a CD player. But now you only have a window.
If the window guy's gain were really a net advantage to the economy, then it would be a viable economic program for the US president to evacuate an American city and nuke it every few years in order to boost the economy.
But of course, in addition to being morally wrong, obviously such a policy would make the nation poorer. One cannot destroy a nation into prosperity.
No Bush will cause it.
As with the destruction of the twin towers and the damaged Pentagon, with a large amount of lives lost, well, who else can be blamed? /s
From other talking head shows, though, people vote what the economy was 6 months before the election. They won't actually feel that much difference this close to an election.
Also, Bush comes across as genuinely concerned. If Kerry shows up in FL, though, he'll just come across as another politician. He doesn't do the "I feel your pain" with any sort of sincerity (unlike Clinton who was especially good at faking it).
I don't think it will hurt Bush at all.
President Bush is not stupid. I'm sure he will be right on top of the situation in his brother's state with money and supplies etc. I feel this will help him not hinder him. IMHO
< /anger >< /sarcasm >
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