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When there are natural disasters and people need to replace everything they own, then we may see increases in certain areas. I personally bought stock after the hurricanes/floods in companies that produce dry wall. But there are a lot buying opportunities out there right now. Big Construction companies, Big Box Home Improvement, etc.
It seems that the OP has a negative and pessimistic outlook and is looking for a justification of that point of view. I base this on numerous past posts. Anyone interested can check the individual's posting history.
The only difference now is we have a POTUS who's communication skills are on par with DPRK's Ministry of Information.
The dotard up against a skilled little SOB. So far the dotard has drawn the line in the sand a half dozen times and the little one has called his bluff, without consequence, every time. Sort of makes the blow-hard look silly, and spineless (which I guess we already knew).
The broken windows "fallacy" is held to be fallacious, because the economic activity triggered by breaking the window is a mere replacement of what was already there (the window), instead of upgrade or innovation. So, yes, breaking a window stimulates the economy... but it stimulates it inefficiently, because spending on repairing the window displaces presumably more efficient stimulation of the economy.
But the assertion of the above being a fallacy, is itself a fallacy. Why? Because, first of all, the broken window might get replaced by a better window. That upgrade would never have happened, had there not been a disaster forcing the window owner's hand. So the new window is stimulative after all, because it's a forced opportunity to innovate. Second, who's to say that the window-owner would have done something useful with his money, had the window stayed whole? Maybe he would have hoarded the money, or frittered it away. The breakage of the window forces him to spend.
This is especially relevant for municipal matters. Maybe the municipality is loath to upgrade the roads. But then disaster strikes... sinkhole, flood, earthquake... That's a forced opportunity to widen the road, to add a bike-lane and so forth.
At the same time, natural disasters can stimulate the economy as well, certain sectors, like Home Depot and Lowe's, and their suppliers, must be doing fabulously well in Houston, as well as the auto industry.
More fireproof structures could have minimized the damage in Santa Rosa. I'll bet most of those houses that were destroyed were constructed of wood.
Of course they were. Building with steel is too expensive and anything else kills you in an earthquake. Plus this is the United States. Wood is the most plentiful building material. That is what we make houses out of here.
I wonder whether they had cleared firebreaks like they are supposed to. Too often that goes by the wayside because they want the foliage nearby, or because they just do not have time or money.
Back to the OP there should be a boost to the economies in the impacted areas. Money is moved from Insurance company reserves to the economy. The reserves cannot be invested with any risk at all, so they are just sitting there. Putting that money into the economy will give it a boost for a time. However the insurance companies will have to rebuild their reserves, so they will have slightly less money to play with (invest) for a time.
There are going to be some shortages. Especially labor shortages. The Construction industry is already struggling due to a lack of qualified workers. It is going to be extremely difficult to get enough people to perform the current work and also the rebuilding work. Maybe some workers will come out of retirement or switch back form retail or whatever career path they switched to during the recession. If pay goes up enough maybe some of the multitudes of employed business, psychology and liberal arts graduates will even go into the trades, but it will take time to train them.
There will also be materials shortages, especially steel and possibly lumber.
There will be crop shortages too. Orange juice has already gotten expensive.
The big winners will be the auto companies. There are likely millions of cars being totaled. Not all will be replaced with new cars, but a significant number will.
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