AoM4: Insurance

The one thing that I found interesting about this episode of AoM was the idea of the welfare state. While Niall Ferguson criticizes it, I think that it in theory doesn't sound that bad. He uses Japan as an example of why it can't work, but I feel like most of his argument as to why it didn't work was based around the country's demographics issues. However, would that mean in a country with a less top heavy population a welfare state would work better? It just seems to me like a welfare state could still feasibly work, and that it just runs into problems like every other economic system.
The other thing that interested me was hurricane Katrina and Louisiana, and how the area became effectively uninsurable. I think that it is important to us as Houstonians considering that many of us were affected by Harvey, and now getting flood insurance might be more difficult. I remember reading an article about some of the affected people, and many of them didn't have any kind of flood insurance because they didn't think that it was gonna happen. However, now that we know that the area can flood, it might be more difficult to get insured for such a thing. In all honesty I'm still not entirely sure how insurance works, but it seems important.

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