>... They will > never be able to pay
> the insurance much less the mortgage.

Let's see what the cost of Katrina is viewed as a cooperative effort.
Say it's $US200 billion as some suggest.
$200B / ?250?million people /50 years
No discounted cash flow etc etc. BOTE without an envelope (but with 
Excel :-) ).

That's about US 4.5 *cents* /day/person over 50 years to pay for one 
of the larger 50 year disasters that the US is liable to face. There 
are MUCH larger potential disasters. One hopes there are not too many 
much larger 50 year ones.

For $1/day you can pay for a 50 year disaster of this scale every 2 or 
3 years nationally.
 ie you can have 25 major potential disasters with a 50 year risk of 
about the same scale as Katrina. Or an equivalent mix of smaller and 
larger ones.

[[[Aside: The war in Iraq or Afghanistan will east up several $200 
billion chunks - you can factor those into the same sort of equation 
or run a different one for such things (unnatural disasters?). 
/Aside ]]]

It's also $800/head NOW to pay for the current problem if you don't 
have an investment/insurance/nest egg already there to cover it. 
That's "quite a lot" considering that almost everyone would have to 
pay that much to cover it. That $800/$40,000 = 2% of the average US 
national income per person according to the table referred to 
previously. A nice way to look at it.

Assumptions are simplistic but indicative. Recook as desired.
E&OE as ever.


        RM


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