Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Forest fires caused $24 billion in insurance losses in California in 2017 and US insurers are pulling out of much of the market in response. By 2018 insurers refused to renew 167,570 home insurance policies according to the WSJ, over half of them in the low density rural areas. I would be interested in why the other 80,000 or so. *
Forest fires caused $24 billion in insurance losses in California in 2017 and US insurers are pulling out of much of the market in response. By 2018 insurers refused to renew 167,570 home insurance policies according to the WSJ, over half of them in the low density rural areas. I would be interested in why the other 80,000 or so. *
When this happens, people
have few options. One of them is to go to what they call “surplus” carriers or to “reinsurers” these are companies that sell
insurance to insurance companies. In either case, the costs are higher and
often the benefits or coverage less. We have these huge deductibles that
insurance companies impose on people whether it’s health care, car insurance,
home insurance and so on. It is no wonder that millions of Americans hate the
insurance industry with a passion. This is something trade union leaders could
use as an organizing tool and also as part of a struggle for our own political
party, an alternative to the twin parties of Wall Street, the Democrats and
Republicans.
Private corporations whether
it’s the sickness industrial complex and its hospitals, big pharma or the
insurance companies, do not invest for social need or for the public good; they
throw money in to circulation in order for it to return to them in greater
quantities than their outlay. They invest to make profit. It’s not simply a
response to demand or need as people need lots of things, We need social
infrastructure for example and the social infrastructure in the US is in dire
straits. Business Week once called it the third deficit. That was many years
before the $1.6 trillion US student debt crisis.
As with all failings of the
so-called free market of which there are too many to list here, the state,
through the two capitalist parties, and California is a very strong Democratic
Party state, ensures that the taxpayer steps in to save the day. Here in
California, the zip codes hit by severe wildfires in 2015 and 2017 had insurers
decline to insure 8,751homeowners in 2018, a 9.6% increase from 2017 and many
homeowners in fire areas, people are relying on the state insurer, the
California Fair Plan to step in.
More and more Americans are
seeing that socialism isn’t so unpopular when the capitalist class falls back
on it. The state, as Marx once pointed out, is the executive committee of the
capitalist class as a whole, the defender of that class and the system it
governs and that was certainly clear in 2008 when socialist measures were
introduced to bail out the system, to drag it from the edge of the abyss. Huge
swathes of industry were nationalized although the capitalist mass media refers
to it a “conservatorship” they don’t
want workers getting any ideas about nationalizing major industries.
There is more to this issue
than simply fires and home insurance. Let’s not forget that the building of
what is in actuality human shelter, the housing infrastructure of society is
also a business and, has to make profit. How we provide housing, how we build,
where and when is determined by market forces and the private sector. We will also never see the end of these
unnatural fires (leaving aside climate change for a moment) as long as society
continues to encroach in to the rural areas, the mountains and our great forests.
The devastation is considerable not just to plant life but also animals. Here
is some video I shot when I drove up to Paradise California after the huge
fire up there. And
here’s some drone footage.
It is the so-called free
market that is at the root of what is a national and global environmental catastrophe.
It is only a democratic socialist rationally planned economic system of
production that can reverse this situation. The millions of workers who suffer
the most from the brutal legacy of capitalist production can bring this about.
To do that we have to recognize ourselves as a distinct class with distinct
interests separate from those whose life and wealth is dependent on the
exploitation and commodification of everything. The planet, we must argue, is
not for sale. Just like Greenland.
* Home Insurers Retreat From Scorched Areas WSJ 8-21-19 p A3
* Home Insurers Retreat From Scorched Areas WSJ 8-21-19 p A3
1 comment:
The racist predator and moron in the White House may not recognize climate change but it is clear that the insurance companies do. Sean Throne.
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