Where are people supposed to live?

All of the premium non-hurricane, non-forest land, is taken already by rich people. Isn't it subsidising rich people if we allow them to live on the best land, while others contributing to society elsewhere observe no benefit?

The US states least affected by natural disasters are Alaska, Main, Michigan and Vermont; based on your post, I assume they're filled with rich people?

I'm surprised New Hampshire isn't on that list...

It is interesting that some of the poorest, white-trash areas of the country are the safest. At least in Maine, the only natural disaster I can remember is the ice storm of 98, which, aside from knocking out power for a week, mostly amounted to an extra week of school vacation that winter.

Wow! Way to stereotype there. I guess the name fits.

I'm a card-carrying backwoods yankee redneck, so I get to talk about my people that way.

Oh yeah, what's the secret handshake?

Can't let the folks from away in on the secret. But it involves Moxie, red hotdogs, and the one true recipe for a real ham hoagie.

>All of the premium non-hurricane, non-forest land, is taken already by rich people.

I guess if you ignore the entire midwest?

Which is tornado prone ;)

Almost every region comes with its own set of possible natural disasters. Maybe we are better off pooling everything and just have natural disaster insurance that covers fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, blizzard, and so on.

Yes, almost every area has it's own disasters to worry about, but it's a mistake to assume that the frequency and average damage for each type of disaster and each area normalizes out to a similar value.

That is obviously true, but that doesn't stop other insurance industries. A healthy 40 year old women and a 70 year old man with heart disease are going to have different prices for a $1m life insurance policy, but both policies will pay out equally regardless of when they die.

I'm not saying home insurance needs to be the same cost for everyone, but the current situation of specialized policies that vary house to house in each region is overly complex. Plus climate change is changing the risk profile for everyone and the results of which are not yet clearly understood by climate scientists let alone random homeowners.

> but the current situation of specialized policies that vary house to house in each region is overly complex

I actually think it's not complex enough. How else do you accurately price natural disasters into existing homes, whose ownership is often measured in decades? I think any area with a chance over a certain percent of a natural disaster that could cause catastrophic loss of property should require insurance, and the insurance cost should be as accurate as possible to the reality of living in that location.

http://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-safest-us-cities-from-na... - warning, its a slideshow

10. southeast michigan*

9. denver colorado

8. chicago illinois*

7. allentown pennsylvania* (actually east, not midwest)

6. dayton ohio*

5. bethesda maryland

4. buffalo new york

3. akron ohio*

2. cleveland ohio*

1. syracuse new york

Hmm, maybe you're thinking of the central US? also known as 'tornado alley'?

The definition of various 'areas' of the US are ill defined, but its clear, at least from my experience living in the midwest and having never experienced a single disaster in the 25 years I've been here, that the midwest is definitely the safest from natural disasters.

Are the astericks there meant to denote midwest? Allentown is further east than Syracuse, Buffalo, and Bethesda, so it isn't midwest.

It is also worth noting that almost all of the cities listed are heavily impacted by snow which it doesn't sound like it was factored in to the ranking. Dealing with large snowfalls have a huge costs although it might not be factored in to normal home insurance since there is generally minimal property damage. It might be interesting to see a cost comparison between dealing with large snowfalls and other less frequent but more damaging weather phenomena like hurricanes or tornadoes.

Finally, Ohio certainly sees less tornadoes than most of the midwest, but it still receives a lot compared to the western US. Here is a nice visual summary of recorded tornadoes [1]. This one [2] is of especial interest and shows all tornadoes that have caused $50+ million in damage which would be important when talking about insurance. Tornado alley certainly gets more tornadoes, but Ohio is right up with them in terms of damage mainly due to the comparative development of the various areas.

[1] - http://uxblog.idvsolutions.com/2012/07/interactive-tornado-t...

[2] - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HlfovbQeMvg/UBFIgq0rAPI/AAAAAAAABP...

I think i was thinking of youngstown ohio - i updated the list

As for ohio, I count 6 tornados on there, maybe 7? (i might be reading it wrong)

since 1950?

I'd say thats pretty low risk.

How many earthquakes have we had in that time?

How many hurricanes have caused billions of damage in that time? Floods/draught/etc

> which it doesn't sound like it was factored in to the ranking.

I dont think it was, it was ranked by natural disasters - so unless its a major blizzard it probably wouldnt be measured. (oh they probably didn't include hail either, which is uncommon, but more damaging to property)

I also dont think snow is on the same level as a natural disaster from an insurance risk perspective, but it likely results in greater or at least similar fatalities overall so i think its a fair point.

I'm not arguing the midwest is immune to all danger, i'm only saying living there puts you at lower risk of being affected by a natural disaster - /and/ - that the land there isn't already owned by 'rich people' (to take us back to why i commented in the first place)

Also - i wish that tornado map was interactive, would be great to see more of the filters

That's what FEMA is and does. It's insurance of last resort for a wide variety of major disasters.

Indiana farmland costs $4400/acre to buy, costs $160/acre-year to rent, and produces 150 corn bushels/acre-year or 50 soy bushels/acre-year. That sells for $3.50/corn bushel, and $9.00/soy bushel.

Doing the math, it's pretty easy to guess that all that midwestern land is probably owned by "rich people", too.

I put that in scare quotes because there is some element of circularity involved. If you own 120 acres of cornfields, you have over $500k worth of property. So do you own the land because you're rich, or are you rich because you own the land?

>Doing the math, it's pretty easy to guess that all that midwestern land is probably owned by "rich people", too.

Now do that math with land values in Detroit.

I think its well accepted that land values are generally quite higher on both coasts than the midwest. Agricultural land values are not very useful for estimating the cost of residential land

Edit:removed some snark

But there is a lot more agricultural/forestry land out there in America than residential. There are more people living in Cook, DuPage, and Lake counties than the entire rest of the state of Illinois. 53% of the population on 3% the land area.

Ted Turner didn't get to own 2M acres of land by buying in Atlanta. Much of that is bison ranches.

There are a lot of people out there that own no more than 0.25 acre, which is pledged as security for a mortgage.

If you own land outright, free of liens and mortgages, whether rural or urban or in between, you're already way ahead of most people. You may not be actual rich, but "rich" by comparison with your neighbors.

Peering under the covers of agribusiness in the U.S. was somewhat enlightening. It would appear that one should not attempt a farming start-up without at least $1M in the bank, and you will only get about an 8% return on it per year, on average. Small farms simply do not make money; you cannot run a small farm as your sole source of income and expect to earn the equivalent of minimum wage.

So the natural conclusion I reached from my cursory research is that the vast majority of raw acreage in the U.S. is probably owned by investment trusts, who lease it for farming, mining, ranching, and logging, to people who barely earn a profit, and mostly just immediately spend 70% of everything they earn on expenses.

There's a good reason why YCombinator invests in tech start-ups instead of plows and cows.

In the West(-ern US), a great deal of it is actually owned by the federal government[0]. Should it be sold to provide homes for people that otherwise would live in hurricane areas?

[0] http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/291-federal-lands-in-the-us