Disasters: Natural and Un-Natural by Paul Hein

The only think I would add to Paul Hein's observations is that, despite much unfortunate precedent to the contrary, it is also not the proper constitutional business of the federal government to provide charitable aid to its own citizens. As farmer Horatio Bunce reminded Congressman Davy Crockett:

"Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose"

http://www.trimonline.org/congress/articles/crockett.htm


Mr. Hein writes:

"The 'United States' which provides relief is the corporation headquartered in Washington D.C., and the assistance it provides is the only sort it can provide: money – or what passes for it. And it obtains that by creating it from thin air, i.e., inflation, or seizing it from people who have earned it, i.e., taxation. Very noble and generous!

"Government disaster relief is, in fact, disaster redistribution. As is always the case with government programs, the benefits are immediate, obvious, and widely touted. The downside is subtle, gradual, and diffuse, and always ignored. The hundreds of millions that the U.S. will provide tsunami victims (or, more likely, their rulers) will have results visible at once: removal of wreckage, those perennial favorites: water and blankets, and other well-photographed benefits. The damage to the standard of living of Americans by the inflation of the dollar, or taxation, will be unappreciated and unreported. Just another straw on the camel’s back. Can anyone doubt that, eventually, the camel’s back must break? But surely, just one more straw can be tolerated! ...

"I find it discouraging to see the public approval of these government relief schemes. It is good and proper for people to sympathize with their neighbors in time of disaster, and altogether fitting that they should come to their aid. But it is not, by the remotest stretch of the imagination, the proper business of government to provide material aid to foreigners. The fact that the burden of this aid is placed on the backs of Americans, whose property the government, in theory, exists to protect, makes the situation surreal."

Disasters: Natural and Un-Natural by Paul Hein