For millennia, storms have hit coastlines, creating new natural structures from the wreckage and destroying others. It is nature and it will be here a lot longer than us.
Billions of tax dollars to protect what? Wealthy people’s beachfront properties? Here is a suggestion, MOVE!
It’s one thing for people to put expensive second houses on barrier islands.
We can’t really move lower Manhattan - it’s already the center of our financial infrastructure, and it’s actually cheaper to just build the barrier than try to move Wall Street to North Dakota.