Forum Post: Figuring out the Costs of Sandy

Im just saying that this amount, 60 billion, is 10% of what the entire budget in the country in 1980. There is something terribly flawed with our entire monetary system and its getting worse. The entire GDP of Ireland is 217 Billion right now. Its going to take the same amount of money to fix up after Sandy that the entire country of Ireland creates in 3 months. That doesnt seem to site well.

This would be a good time to address insurance companies. If insurance is mandatory on properties, and this happened, then where are they?

And how much are they contributing? From what Ive seen, they are going to pay 10-20 Billion.

Flood damage in homes is basically ripping out about the bottom three feet of the drywall and all the floors, baseboards, spraying the remaining studs with bacterial and mold killing chemicals, and then redo the drywall, install the floors, and put in your baseboards.

Figure 10k to do the usual 1500k sq ft house. If half the money (30billion) went to the flood damage, not the wind damaged homes, it would cover 3 million homes.

Christie said about 72k in Jersey were "damaged". Thats pretty broad. But we will go with it, assuming its all flood damaged, and needs a total gut out for typical flooding.

Lets assume that NYC has about 5 times as much damaged homes, at 350k homes. (theres around 3 million homes in the NYC area, including Jersey).

So we are at around a half a million homes, needing flood damage (theres no way its that much). Lets bump the 10k to redo the floors and some drywall and base to 20k, just for arguements sake.

That puts it at 10 Billion. Astromical what you can do with that. Throw in the 20 billion from insurance to cover other damages like roofs, etc. So where is the other 50 billion going?

And just to be clear, Im not saying that these people shouldnt get some help. They should. But the last 12 years have been such a free for all that there is no longer anyone trying to actually budget things. Its like they just pick a number and go with it.