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There is a lesson to be learnt there. I just wish I knew what it was.

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Sure. The lesson learnt is... more tax breaks for the wealthy, to hell with the infrastructure. A crumbling one at that.

But seriously, we can learn a lesson from Europe. Western Europe at least, where taxes are a little higher than here, but the infrastructure and general quality of living is much better.

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stone: we can learn a lesson from Europe. Western Europe at least, where taxes are a little higher than here, but the infrastructure and general quality of living is much better.

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My friend, that is typical liberal-socialist talk. Can you be serious? Are you suggesting that lower taxes don't make the general quality of living better? That if you have an extra sixteen or seventeen dollars a month in your pocket your life doesn't improve appreciably?

Are you suggesting that you would be willing to trade the possible tenuous benefits of infrastructure for higher taxes?

That is just SO liberal.

And you don't live in the real world.

Sincerely,

Trying to appreciate the con point of view. (and utterly failing)

Well, Stone, I am not entirely sure how you judge a little higher versus a lot higher? For instance, when I was stationed in Belgium, one of the Gendarmes with whom I worked paid right at 58% in taxes on an income roughly equal to my own...On that income, I paid about 17% in taxes. Now, I confess to being a product of the public school system but I think (help me if I am wrong here) that 58% is just a bit less than three and a half times 17%. Now, if three and a half (give or take a point or two) times an amount is only a little bit more, what exactly constitutes a lot more?

Now, lets discuss that infrastructure and the general quality of life...I will allow you to elaborate on exactly what you think is so much better lest I be accused of placing words in your mouth.

Raise the taxes, give just a wee bit more? Are ye nuts, man? To date I do not see any improvements in my way of life with each hike of taxes. I'm all for keeping that extra $17 or so in my pocket. That at least I can see improvements with.

Gas is up to $1.40/litre here (3.78 litres = 1 gallon). US gallons are larger than ours. Just 4 short days ago, it was 84cents/litre. Almost double in 4 days. The current cost here is roughly $5.10/gallon.

This is my piggy bank after filling up at the gas station.

Gas prices were at $3.19 a gallon up until today when they dropped to $3.03 a gallon.

I'm still looking for a second job. It looks like I need one now more than I ever had in the past.

JD- Holland has sea defences which, it is believed, will have a pretty good chance of protected the country from the sea in the event of a massive disaster...

Wax- I say Bull!
Not that what you said is in error, but the belief that Holland will not someday suffer a massive catastrophe is!

We can put all of the protection we want in place, we can better our chances of survival a thousand fold. Yet the fact is that Holland has suffered in the past and it will suffer in the future.

I am kind of walking the fine line of devil's advocacy here because I believe fully in managing our risks as much as possible. Yet there are facts to living on this planet that modern man must understand.

Should we build levees? Absolutely we should, but we will never be able to remove risk by doing so.
The very fact that levees are required prove that risk for the area in question, and the very best we could ever hope to do is construct defenses in such a way as to overcome the worst projections we can come up with.
But that scenerio is not even realistic.

We know that at some time in the past a tsunami has struck the west coast of America which in some places reached one thousand feet. This is a fact because we can measure the destruction and damage on the sides of barrier cliffs.
Could we ever hope to negate such a risk?
Not by a long shot!

The levees in New Orleans were not even designed to combat hurricane surge, but instead, to manage the lake which was elevated above the city. A complete public works redo could have replaced the weak side concrete walls with string sided berths and earthworks but the city would have lost thousands of blocks and suffered for housing.
And even if this had been done, there is no proof that the lake itself wouldn't have simply spilled into the city and eroded any earthworks in it's way.
Again people; water needs to go somewhere and we can't change that fact. The geography dictates that we could not build a large enough retainment spillway to handle a catagory four hurricane storm surge.

And if we could, one would need to argue that doing such a thing is wrong in the long run. It comes down to choices sometimes.

In 1967-68 Mankato Minnesota suffered from floods in it's lower areas. It was decided that something simply had to be done so the army engineers came in and built fifty foot retaining walls along the river.
The city felt very safe in 1969 when another flood occured but it turned out that nature has a way of teaching lessens.
The water simply backed up the sewers... rose 150 feet up the pipes and poured down over the hill to flood the town.
In order to fix this, the city was forced to build vertical dykes on top of the hill to prevent this spill-over.
Yet a completely different problem was created, and the lessen was a long time in coming.

In the early nineties the Missippi River plain suffered the worst flooding in history... why? Because of towns like Mankato who had protected themselves but insured that other communities up and down the line would be truly screwed when a big one hit.

It is a lessen that must be accepted.

The fact is that someday Hollond will see catastrophic failure of it's defences. The mechanisms involved in this failure are hard to predict but we know what some of them could be.
Whether it involves a tsunami caused by an earthquake offshore... made far worse than it naturally would be due to due to the defenses built in the first place, or something much more exotic such as an Atlantic meteor stike, failure will occur.

Should we spend all of our time worrying about the eventuality of such a thing? No... but we must be aware of it and accept it as fact.

My hometown of St Peter was struck by a tornado and over half of the homes here were destroyed. What are the odds of such a thing happening in my lifetime? Pretty low actually.
But what are the odds of such a thing happening eventually--- and will it happen again? That would be one hundred percent, because tornados happen and man can not stop that fact.
Eventually, over time, every city on every coastline and every river bank will be flooded.
Most of those events will be manageable, but some will not be.

It never fails to amaze me when the sheep act shocked at such events, as if they were simply not imagined.
For the last decade I have watched Discovery Channel documentaries explaining that New Orleans would eventually suffer as it recently did and explaining exactly why.
I have read articles, listened to radio programs... all of them explaining without a doubt that such a thing would eventually happen whether we like it or not.
Yet the sheep still act shocked!

BTW: The island that you live on will eventually suffer as well. London is not that protected concerning tsunami and sea level rise.
Should you run naked, screaming in the streets? No, but you should be aware that such a catastrophy will eventually occur no matter what is done to prevent it.

Wax, you miss the point.

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Not that what you said is in error, but the belief that Holland will not someday suffer a massive catastrophe is!

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I didn't say that. I said they have prepared so that they can protect themselves well. Like I said, the sea defences of Holland are thought to be strong enough to hold back storms the like of which only have a 1 in a thousand chance of occuring.

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The levees in New Orleans were not even designed to combat hurricane surge

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The levees were strong enough to hold back category 3 hurricanes and storm surges. They were NOT strong enough to hold back category 5 hurricanes, and resulting storm surges. This was a KNOWN FACT. Hence phrases like "We are only one storm away from disaster".

You tell of catastrophes that will occur, that we will never be able to protect ourselves against. That is true. But should we sit on our arses and wait for them, and let ourselves be destroyed by things we can protect ourselves against? That is stupid. There are certain things we can protect ourselves against. Holland proves this. The storms New Orleans has survived in the past are testimony to that. However, more could have been done to protect New Orleans in this case. Think of it this way: Would you rather have defences that you know wont work, or defences that may have a chance of working?

Will we ever be able to totally protect ourselves against nature? NOt in our lifetimes. That is a given. But that is not to say we should not bother trying.

A good story illustrating the dangers of shortermist risk "management", glad at least some people understand!

The problem is that the more protection there is, the worse a disaster there will be when the "big one" happens, precisely because of the defences and the psychological impact such "security" has on people.

One factor I've not seen mentioned here is that NO's natural wetlands that used to act to soak up some of the surge were wiped out by property developers.

The thing is there should be a much more rational informed and open debate about how to manage the risk.

In a milder way we have a similar problem in the UK given the massive housebuilding on floodplains...I live half a mile from the River Trent, now, I used to be mile away and the best part up a hill, but there have never been floods that get as far as me. A few years back there was a flood and fortunately defence walls had been built to protect the relevant areas, the Water Authority responsible manages the whole trent water basin...as flood defences further downstream at Newark are weaker with no capacity to absorb a surge, Nottingham's unbuilt on wetlands soaks this up. PLenty of people living on floodplains don't know! Didn't they do any geography at school? The info is out ther on websites too.

A small note on fuel prices and regulation...it is precisely because American has a fragmented over-regulated fuel market that you get these variations. If there was one market the price would, allowing for tranpsort costs, be the same. The California market illiterate response to "regulation" should be example enough to warn people here. If you cap prices, you will cut investment and be left with ageing infrastructure. This should be a no brainer...Sheeple seems to be the appropriate phrase...and I'm not particularly a cheerleader for elitism...I suppose the great unwashed might possibly be deemed offensive, or a tad near the bone...oh well...

PS, fuel prices are $6 in Europe.

PPS. the overall tax rate in the US is around 30%, in Europe it's about 45%, not quite 3 times difference! When talking about taxes its best to avoid the political game of meaning income taxes as opposed to total real taxes. the question is whether the free education and healthcare provided with the money is worth it...Frances highspeed train network is great, any idea how much it costs the taxpayer? The short answer is rather a lot more than is worthwhile, imho!