America’s Insurance Crisis
The L.A. fires are just the latest reminder of the real manmade disaster.
If there is one ironclad rule of economics, it is price controls distort markets. You might think that’s just another academic bromide, but when government refuses to let markets clear, the results are profound.
Put a price floor on (or subsidize) a product and you get surpluses, but put a ceiling (by definition at below market rates) on what a business may charge and you soon get shortages. Which is precisely what homeowners looking to rebuild their homes in fire-ravaged Los Angeles are about to find out.
Try as they might, Democrat politicians (and a mainstream media that elects them) won’t be able to blame climate change for the seasonal Santa Anna winds, empty fire hydrants and reservoirs—or the underinsured. Indeed, so much of this $50 billion disaster was due to the usual virtue-signaling over a contrived ‘climate crisis’ designed to expand government.
Record Sierra Nevada snowfalls melt into the ocean instead of being captured in reservoirs.1 California conservationists continue to block the clearing of undergrowth that ignites wildfires while vehemently opposing controlled burns. LA Mayor Karen Bass—absent in her citizens’ most urgent time of need—and her woke SoCal city council defund police and fire departments as they spend lavishly on LGBTQ+ programs.2
Climate change caused none of this—Democrats did.