The care-taking role of the federal gov't. in massive disaster relief is not socialism. What's a gov't going to do, sit by and watch people die, lest it be called socialistic?
The government sat by while my grandfather died of cancer. I didn't blame the government, or expect the government to somehow make him live forever.
"What's a gov't going to do, sit by and watch people die, lest it be called socialistic?"
Facts or feelings? is what I've been asking everyone lately. You want to talk facts, or you want to just run on feelings?
If my house is destroyed, and the government DOESN'T rebuild it, I will not die, believe me. All these tens of thousands of people who have been relocated, and are eating, and going to school, and being given clothes and household goods...that's not dying.
If the government comes in and rebuilds these crap neighborhoods with "quality" housing...that's only the latest version of public housing. In less than a generation, they will be irreparable, crime-ridden hellholes. Cabrini Green, near the Quarter.
I'll just stay with housing, as this subject is so big we could go back and forth on it for days.
If the government on the other hand builds nice, solid, brick housing in those crap neighborhoods...then has the people who used to live on those lots PAY FOR PART OF IT, even if it's a 2% 30-year mortgage, then they are invested. When they start moaning about how they can't earn their modest mortgage payments, the gov't should be ready to say, Here, there's a community college, or a trade school, and here's your slot. We're going to pay 75% of your tuition and costs...but you will BORROW 25% of the cost of making yourself far more valuable in the marketplace, and we'll defer the payback for three years after your graduation.
Well, I strayed off housing, didn't I? And I know there's a whole argument to be made about how they already OWN that property (even if they get a $125K house in place of a $9K house)...but those, frankly, are the details.
This all comes down to one immutable human truth, and it's been true for 99% of all history and in 99% of all cases (and I said human, not black): We appreciate what we have to earn more than what is handed to us. We discover an ownership interest in what we have invested our capital in. We are more protective and respectful of what we have had to spend our time (which is to say, our lives) earning. It was ever thus.
People (the hardworking ants), who select their homestead site wisely, buy market rate insurances (take a dam hint about risk if you can't find or afford insurance), save to build their cash reserves for just such callamities, are then punished by governments by having even more of their property/income taxed to support the grasshoppers of our society.
There are always the unlucky which our generous society has always reached out to, except our taxpayers are now the primary insurance/welfare Nanny for all, including the people who function and profit by living recklessly. Just as "First Responders" must be your own self, one's own families and neighbors because residents outnumber the "government" thousands to one. When $!it happens, we're on our own, for up to a week or month, or if the Qaedas nukes ignite, a year or more. There is no Plantation Fairy to carry us all to Neverland Ranch. OOPs, bad example.
People now live en mass where they shouldn't - if they had to bear the true costs of their lifestyle site selection; we'll see in time that millions have concentrated where common sense, supported by field research, tells rational people that known risks are overwhelming. The re-insurance industry with its international money shall redefine insurability. The sheeple are childish in the extreme. They demand that others susidize their life styles.