[FreedomPoster]

>>The upside to this is the jobs that will be around for the clean up and fix up.

I’m sorry, there’s no upside to a destructive event. Time for a Broken Windows economics lesson.

That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen
Frédéric Bastiat
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

The Broken-Window Fallacy
https://mises.org/library/broken-window-fallacy

[SkyPilot]

The upside to this is the jobs that will be around for the clean up and fix up...... I’m sorry, there’s no upside to a destructive event

Yes, it is a terrible, destructive event. Lives and homes will be shattered. But virgil is correct on the economic increase in the contruction and contractor businesses during rebuilding. I went through Sandy, and for months afterwards, the contractors (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, stone masons, etc.) were so busy with work they would not even return your phone calls.

[SamAdams76]

The Broken Window Fallacy does not apply in this case. That was a micro-event. Shopkeeper has his window broken and pays the glazier instead of buying a new pair of shoes or a book for his library. Money that would have been spent anyway - just on something else. I get that.

Destructive hurricanes like this are macro-events. Billions of dollars will need to be literally created (borrowed by lifting our debt ceiling) to rebuild. This is not money that would have been spent on something else otherwise. The wisdom of raising our debt ceiling is another argument but not applicable to the Broken Window Fallacy.

The biggest economic boom the U.S. ever had was just after World War II - when nearly half the civilized world was destroyed or badly damaged.