The Houston flood, the anarchy of the capitalist market and the case for socialist planning
The disaster along the US Gulf Coast triggered by Hurricane Harvey continues to worsen as the storm moves east into Louisiana. Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, remains inundated by unprecedented levels of flooding. The reported death toll is 30 and rising, amid reports of dozens of residents gone missing. Five days after landfall, it is still not known how many people are in need of rescue.
Even as the level of death and destruction in southeast Texas mounts, there is a concerted effort to deny that anything could have been done to prepare for or limit the impact of the storm.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator William “Brock” Long proclaimed that the disaster was impossible to foresee. “You could not forecast this up. You could not dream this forecast up,” Long said Monday night. Uncritically quoting Long, the Washington Post published a front-page article with the headline: “Rescue officials say there was no way to prepare for deluge’s ferocity.”
In its editorial on Tuesday, the New York Times wrote that rescue efforts were going “about as well as could be expected.” It added that instead of “lamenting its failure to heed long-ago warnings,” the country should “look ahead.” Ominously, it suggested that, as in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, working class areas of Houston might be left to rot, declaring that officials will need to “make difficult decisions about whether to rebuild and how.”
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/30/pers-a30.html
