"I don't have renter's insurance but the taxpayers should help me." My ass.

The BBQ Pit
1

Now this really get’s my craw.

We recently had a tornado outside of the city in an area that is filled with trailors, and many of them, relatively poor people that keep to themselves. Many of which proclaim that government shouldn’t be involved in their lives(not all.) Been a big issue over the years with zoning laws and the outcropping of their sentiments.

I 'spose you can liken many of them to those who live in Montana and Idaho who hate any government intervention. Many are just people living the American dream and have a plot of land that they rent or own and give no regard to the government that is elected.

Well, according to some of the people in my community, they are up in arms; that many of these people are not getting federal, state or even county assistance for their losses. Their homes, rented or owned, were demolished by a tornado and since the Feds state no go on help, the state says no go on help they are getting their panties in a wad that they can’t get help from the county.

Now, excuse me here. I have renter’s insurance. It’s not an expense I want to have in my life but if all my belongings are lost in a tornado (which can happen here) or a fire (you never know) or a serious theft, then I need to be prepared for this.

It costs me $170 a year. Pretty fucking cheap considering that all my belongings (except the antiques I own) can be replaced at current market value if a twister fucks me and my material life over.

I figured this…and I am making an assumption here so bear with me. If I smoked 5 less packs of the cheapest cigarettes per month I can afford to pay for my insurance. If I bought one less case of beer a month, I would have still have enough for a pack of cigs and some gum.

What it somes down to is…don’t ask for my tax money to bail your ass out if a tornado comes through your neighborhood. I pay more than half of my income to pay rent, I still make my insurance payments every month so I don’t have to rely upon you.

I pay my car insurance, my rent, my utilities, my food and my gas…I withdraw a lot of fun shit so I can afford my insurance payments. If you don’t make much money, then find a freakin job that will pay you the money you need in the case of a catastrophic lose. $14.00 a month equates to .63 cents a day, and if you loose everything in your possession (of course based on my higher rate of insurance rates because of the stuff I have) then find it…Many insurance companies will work with you so you have the bare minumum of essentials if you loose your home and belongings but don’t sit there and whine to the county commissioners because you didn’t carry insurance and they don’t give you assistance.

MY God people there is a reason to have insurance, not because the law requires it with cars but because if you are seriously fucked, you get financial resources to get your life back on track. But don’t sit there and be against government and then ask why they wont help you in your time of need. Be prepared. Geez.

I don’t get it, I am covered, so why the fuck aren’t you? You can’t afford it? Then find a way to afford it, most people I know will find a way to afford what they need. Most people I know bitch about the government but also make preparations to cover their own asses rather than expect a handout when something happens. It’s called pride in you and your life. Taking a stance for your lifestyle, even if it is minimal…I know people with less that do more.

With that last sentence, I shake my head.

BTW, no I don’t have health insurance and NO I would not expect that your taxes go to help me out if I were to become ill. It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s that I am a lazy ass dumbshit more than anything.

< pardon any typos >

2

Insurance: The commodity nobody wants until they need it.

I think the main problem is that some people (not all, just some) don’t think very far ahead. They don’t consider all the possibilities. And when something bad happens - and they don’t have insurance - they don’t even start to think “Hey, I could have done such-and-such to prevent such a financial problem.” Nah… they see the easiest solution, demanding that Big Daddy Gummint take care of the mess.

Feh.

It’s nice to have someone else shoulder the responsibility, but don’t whine and complain when they choose not to.

3

Now there’s a rant after my own heart. Those people are fucking pathetic. “I get to do whatever I want and no one has the right to say otherwise. The consequences are my own business and not the government’s. Oops, I screwed up. Help me, Mommy. Why is the government never around when I need them?”

When I was a senior in High School, the draft registration was reimplemented. They later made a rule that those who don’t register don’t get free government money. Fair enough. It’s quid pro quo you stupid, lazy fucks. Either stick to your principles and get a fucking job or give something up for your money. It doesn’t work both ways you spoiled little never-lived-in-the-real-world shitbags. You want all of the fucking benefits and aren’t willing to take one drop of the consequences. Losers.

Haj

4

My own father bitches and complains about anything that costs him money. But while bitching, he was lucky enough to have a good fire insurance policy.

A few months ago, March 9 me thinks, he…wait for it…left a candle burning and lost everything in his house. Although the fire only took out a quarter of one room, it burned the TV and various equipment and the plastics produced so much smoke, the insurance guy said everything is gone.

He is now being cut a check for $67,000 for furnishings alone.

Spend the money people.

5

I’m surprised you’re even able to get contents insurance to cover the loss of possessions by tornado if you live in a tornado prone area. I wish that kind of coverage was available here (you can’t insure agaist flood in flood-prone areas, etc here).

6

I’m not familiar with tornado coverage, but here on the Wasatch Fault I pay extra homeowners insurance for damage caused that may be caused by earthquakes. It isn’t cheap, but I would rather have the insurance company pay to have my house put back together after the big one hits.

It’s just a wild guess, but I would say that for a price you can get coverage for just about anything.

7

Where do you live? In Kansas (a pretty damn tornado-prone area, if I say so myself) it’s SOP for home insurance to cover tornadoes. Typically, it is covered under the “wind and hail” part of the policy. The only catch is sometimes this part of the policy has a 1% deductable - which means on a $150,000 house, your deductable is $1500 instead of the normal $500. Thankfully, my insurance does not have that.

8

Are you sure you don’t have that backwards? Around here you can only get flood insurance if you are in a flood prone area. It is government subsidized I believe.

We had a 100 year flood due to a hurricane a few years back. Only the people in the flood zones had flood insurance. If you weren’t in a flood zone you were out of luck. Lots of people lot their homes because they weren’t in an official flood zone so never could purchase insurance.

9

No, I don’t have it backwards.

I moved to Sydney from a floodprone area, and it was simply impossible to insure against flood damage in certain parts of that area becuase flooding is such a frequent occurence there.

Typically, our government makes disaster relief funds available when major floods (or other major natural disasters) hit, but it’s fairly minimal assistance.

I’m guessing the reason it is different comes down to economics - the claims would be so frequent that no extra premium would offset the cost, and there simply aren’t enough policy holders to spread the cost around. I can see that in the US, the sheer number of people holding policies would allow the cost to be spread around without having a major impact on overall premium rates.

10

My homeowners insurance doesn’t cover ANY natural disaster, and I know of no Dutch HO insurance that does. Of course, tornados and the like are extremely rare here. Floodings are a problem in some river areas of the country, as are hail storms in the “westland”, and area with tens of thousands of greenhouses. There isn’t an insurance company in the country that will cover those risks. So usually, the government subsidizes any repairs to be done.

11

Coldy,

You can smoke pot and hash in your country but your insurance companies wont cover losses due to “natural causes”? Yeesh, that’s a pretty screwed up system in my view. That means to me, to live in Amsterdam that unless it’s a fire or burglers break into your home you are basically screwed?

Here, you don’t get flood insurance through a normal insurance agency, I do believe that is covered by a government entity here. I could be wrong but I think that’s correct. Where I live flooding is not a common occurance so I don’t carry flood insurance but I do carry insurance for other disasters.

Think about it though. We all give our money to insurance companies, they stash it into mutual funds, stocks and other money gaining accounts. They turn a few hundred into a few thousand and a problem arrises. Our years of insurance have become millions of dollars in a portfolio and they only have to give back what they think is fair.

Well, regardless, people need to have insurance and I feel sorry for those of you that can’t get covered in horrible situations like a tornado, flood or whatever.

12

For a risk to be insurable, you ideally need the following criteria:[ul][li]Relatively infrequent occurance[/li]
[li]insurable interest - ie insured party has an interest in risk not occurring[/li]
li independence of risks (often difficult to achieve in reality)[/ul]For the policy to be competitive, it must also cover the risks that people want covered. This may be contradictory to the above list.[/li]
Hence if a natural disaster is too likely it is not an insurable risk. Insurance companies will not and should not touch it. They aren’t charities.

And this:

is bizarre. Would you care to elaborate techie? Insurance is an exceedingly competitive business. When insurance companies price their policies, they take into account investment proceeds they expect to receive. If they did not invest then your policy would cost more. And contrary to your opinion, most insurance companies have actually been losing money for a number of years.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Insurance companies are actually evil empires and their chief execs spend their days swimming Scrooge McDuck-style in their vats of cash. My bad.

pan

13

How’s about this scenario.

I don’t need insurance from tornados and floods, because they don’t really happen here. And in the rare occasion that something completely out of the ordinary happens, the government always makes sure the costs are covered. Sometimes because the damages are a result of a failure in a government controlled operation (river floods SHOULD be impossible if the governmental water management entities keep the dykes in good shape), and sometimes because it was completely unpredictable, such as in the case of the 1992 Roermond earthquake (a mere 5.5, only one casualty, but lots of structural damage to old houses etc.).

Works for me - not a fucked op system at all.

And I do think you’ve got your reasoning on insurance companies wrong. Paying off costs after a major natural disaster is a HUGE burden on most insurance companies, and many have gone bankrupt after such an occurance.

An example. You pay $170 per year in insurance. Let’s say 25% of the households in the US do the same, and let’s assume that the average premium period per household at the moment of a disaster is 20 years. Also, let’s assume your amount is an average one.
At 250 million people, I’m assuming 100 million households. So, in our example, 25 million households have insurance for natural disasters. Assuming a household pays $170 per year, the accrued capital after 20 years is somewhat under $10,000 (assuming a rather agressive 10% annual growth on capital). So that means that the combined insurance companies have a total capital of $250 Billion (they probably have more, but this is what the premiums for the homeowners insurance have amounted to).
That sounds like a lot of money, but it really isn’t. The 1993 Great Flood had an estimated total cost of $15.6 Billion. A hard hit for ALL insurance companies involved, and no doubt a final blow for some of the smaller ones.

14

Coldfire,

you live in Holland and don’t need flood cover?!

Your dykes must be strong.*

Incidentally I recently went to a reception at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in London, for the launch of a chess book. Civilised conversation in English, good food + drink - what a pleasant bunch!

*in the spirit of SDMB double entendres: do you still put your fingers in dykes?

15

The dykes ARE strong. It took a lot of disasters to get the seaside 100% secured, but it is now. Never say “never”, of course, but the chance of a North Sea storm breaking the dykes is very, very small indeed.

The river dykes are another thing, and there have been two significant floods over the last decade. No casualties, but some villages got flooded completely, causing lots of damage to houses and infrastructure. Mind you, a large part of these problems originate elsewhere. If they open up the emergency flood gates too rapidly upstream somewhere in Germany or Switzerland, our dykes get hell to pay a few hours later. In fact, the latest flood could have probably been avoided altogether if there had been better international coordination.

The Dutch Embassy in London is a very pretty one, as are all the buildings on Kensington Park Road (that’s the name, isn’t it?). Can’t say I’ve ever been allowed inside, but I’m glad you enjoyed it. :slight_smile:

16

Sorry reprise. I guess they would do things differently in different countries. :slight_smile: Someone else mentioned Kansas and I wasn’t even thinking.

17

Yes, the buildings are rather imposing around there. I can’t remember the name of the side road now, but I think it was Park Gate or similar. (Although the embassy is on the main road, its address isn’t.)

Do you not know the English slang for dyke?
(A woman goes into a shop and asks for a double entendre. So the assistant gives her one.)

18

On the whole I agree wholheartedly with Techie.

My only caveats to this are people who are unable to buy the required insurance because the insurance companies won’t sell it or people who have insurance and the insurance companies don’t pay up.

In the first case I believe earthquake insurance is practically unbuyable. If it’s even offered I think it is so expensive as to not be remotely affordable. I do know most homeowners policies won’t pay in the event of a nuclear ‘accident’ (be it a bomb or a nearby powerplant going FOOM).

Not being able to purchase some types of insurance in areas prone to certain disasters makes sense from the insurance companies perspective. I think it was hurricane Andrew in 1992 that would have bankrupted Allstate and a few other insurance carriers. They ran around, added up the costs of paying off on their policies and figured they simply couldn’t do it…they’d go bankrupt. Personally I think they should have been forced to go out of business…that’s the price you pay for bad decision making…but the people with the insurance would only have gotten a fraction of the required money to rebuild.

A tornado, while highly destructive, generally doesn’t cause as much monetary damage as ‘wide area’ disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. I’m not sure of the calculated risk of actually getting hit by a tornado but I imagine it’d be an acceptable, insurable risk and thus affordable. People in areas where such a thing might be remotely suspected should have this insurance or not bitch when their house flys somewhere over the rainbow (not to mention liability insurance for when the family of the Wicked Witch of the East sues you for having your house fall on their grandmother).

Areas such as Florida where a hurricane is guaranteed to smack the state every so often or California where sooner or later earthquakes smash good portions of the state seem to make poor insurable candidates. If insurance companies refuse to sell certain coverage I can understand people looking to the government for help. It is in th ebest interest of the economy, it’s humanitarian and the right thing to do and, in the end, it’s something we’d all want should the worm turn for us someday.

19

Of course I do, but being a man of refinement and taste, I chose to ignore it. :wink:

20

Why are there so many dykes in Holland?

…

because so much of it is below sea level, of course.

:wink:

pan