Hurricane clean up is BIG BUSINESS in North Carolina

I will admit right out of the gate that I am a net recipient of this spending every time that a hurricane ends up doing some damage to the rather crazy coastline that we have here in North Carolina. The Outer Banks in particular is a battle against nature that simply cannot be won but every time a hurricane tears shit up, the very wealthy owners of this area petition to have it rebuilt even though everyone can tell by looking at this long string of islands that probably were never meant to have anyone living on it, that it should have been walked away from a long time ago.

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Every couple of years highways and houses on the Outer Banks and other nearby areas get totally wiped out because they are built on sand dunes that have to be dredged every so often to prevent even more damage. Also, every couple of years they build it back in exactly the same fashion and then everyone acts so surprised when it happens again a few years later.

Hurricane Ian was tough on Florida and that dominated the news because of the urgency of it all but here in NC, this is just something that happens to us all the time. This time around the monetary damage was a bit higher than expected and when they give these wildly broad estimations of how much it is going to cost it kind of boggles that mind that we don't pursue a more permanent solution like, I dunno, taking the highways off of tiny ass sand islands?

It is meant to cost between 40 and 70 million dollars just for this one time around and guess who is getting to pay for all of that? Every single person who has a job and pays taxes in North Carolina.

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In private instances such as houses and what not, the taxpayers are not obligated to chip in at all but municipal buildings that are located in the same stupid areas well, those are paid for by people that live hundreds of miles away from the coast and all of this just seems extremely unfair.

To make matters worse, the decision about who is going to get these lucrative contracts is made by elected officials and as you might guess, the contracts have a sneaky tendency to end up in the hands of people that are closely tied to said government officials. I suppose this shouldn't surprise anyone because it's not like there are dozens of contractors out there that are capable of rebuilding an entire highway.

I end up with some of these contracts on a very small scale but the crazy thing is that when we submit our quotes it is almost always for a lot more money than we would ever propose on a private build or refurbishment. The government officials don't have any idea how much these repairs or builds should actually cost so many times we are awarded the contracts - which just blows my mind. The government doesn't care, because since the cause of the damage is a "natural disaster" if the government doesn't have the money to do it they simply appeal to FEMA who then also just cuts them a check.

There is almost not accountability here and seeing as how that has always been the case, why would they ever do it any differently?

This level of waste on the part of the government, even though I am personally benefitting from said waste, is angering. This is a big part of the reason why I do not trust the government to do really anything. No matter what they do it is going to be done in the most expensive way possible and when you start "following the money" it almost always leads back to someone that has close ties with someone in high government positions. How this isn't a conflict of interest is mind-boggling. The fact that they build back in the same fashion that ends up destroyed within a decade suggests to me that this isn't meant to ever be a solution, it is meant to be a never-ending cash cow that comes as the expense of uninformed taxpayers who probably don't even know it is going on.

I would gladly give up my contracts to see this entire process overhauled. The US has been spending money it does not have for almost all of my life and this is just crazy.