The conflagration we're seeing in California with these wildfires are to some extent a product of wealth inequality.

in california •  6 days ago 

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We have very large resources going towards building 50 million houses in remote areas surrounded by wild areas with overgrown brush and extremely low property taxes. These remote houses increase the chance of fires igniting in their area due to homeowner accidents and or maintenance problems with the power lines to those houses that are particularly triggered by high winds. Meanwhile relatively little resources are spent on infrastructure that could potentially contain or prevent these fires from starting. The richest people will get bailed out by emergency relief funds. I would like to see emergency relief cut off at something like the 80th or 90th percentile of home prices in California. With the balance of emergency relief funds going to help prevent the next fires.

There are other problems, but this is a dimension that we really should consider also. Inequality hurts prosperity even as the average GDP increases. This has been seen across many domains.

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