Posted on 10/06/2004 12:17:59 PM PDT by cogitator
The four hurricanes that recently struck the southeastern United States left a lingering imprint on the national economy by pushing up oil prices, wiping out jobs and disrupting shipments of fruits and vegetables to grocery stores. . . .
Insurance payments from the four storms combined will total as much as $23 billion, . . . Through Sept. 10, nearly 13,000 workers in Florida alone had filed new claims for unemployment benefits because of job losses related to Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan, . . . After combining the employment losses and gains, the hurricanes probably eliminated 15,000 jobs nationally, Stone estimated.
But the reconstruction work will probably add more jobs by the end of the year than were lost in September and October, he estimated.
Likewise, despite the severe suffering experienced by individual families, communities and businesses, the reconstruction efforts will likely boost the nation's economy slightly overall, over time . . .
(rest of article concerns impact on oil)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Economists would have to say that hurricanes can only have negative effects. Resources have to be redirected to reconstruction just to get us back to where we were pre-hurricane.
It would be better for the hurricanes not to hit the US and wealth-creating resources actually used to create new wealth.
Nice excerpting, c.
There's going to be lots of jobs created and material sold in that devastated region, for years. The regional economy should be booming, soon enough.
My prayers for all down there, especially the casualties and their families.
You're right, of course. But leave it to a left wing rag to advocate the equivalent of creating jobs by going around breaking windows.
Maybe the federal government should create a bulldozer corp to go around and do major damage in the years when we don't get enough natural disaasters to help our economy.
...pushing up oil prices, wiping out jobs and disrupting shipments of fruits and vegetables to grocery stores. . . .
...will likely boost the nation's economy...over time . . .
Yes, I'm sure the local drug, prostitution, bail bond, gambling, and strip club industries are supplemented to a large degree by them, but assigning the University of Miami's football team this kind of role in the economy of the Sunshine State's largest metropolitan area, and the nation as a whole, seems like an unprofessional and even risky assessment for an economist to make.
Then again, my habit of selective reading may have altered what the journalist was trying to convey in this article. I don't know.
We should select each state once every fifty years, force a mandatory evacuation, and then bomb it to smithereens. We should not have to rely on hurricanes to create long-term economic growth.
</sarcasm*>
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