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Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

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Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#131

Post by vkou »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #101
vkou wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump's government repealed the individual mandate penalty, and then the court ruled ruled that in it's new form, it no longer qualified as a tax and was unconstitutional. (Not that this meant anything, since the legality of a fee of $0 doesn't matter.) The court case as a whole argued that because the GOP changed the ACA in a manner that made part of it (the $0 fee) illegal, the entirety of the ACA should be made il…

calling insurance a tax is about as strong an indication of regulatory capture as I can think of. It should have never been a tax specifically because it's an unconstitutional act. Calling it a tax is the letter vs the spirit of the constitution. If you and others like yourself want to ensure everyone has health insurance then __make it mandatory for the state to pay for it__. Anything else and you're just taxing the…

> it's an unconstitutional act.

That is an interesting opinion, but at this point, both a conservative, and then a super-conservative, packed-with-federalist-society SCOTUS has disagreed with you twice on this issue (5-4) and then (7-2). It's about as written-in-stone as you can get in the United States.

The courts think this is above-board, the executive thinks this is above-board, most of the public thinks its above-board, it's safe to say its above-board.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#132

Post by vlovich123 »

legitster wrote: post #75

This reminds me of when I learned there was no such thing as "The Children's Crusade". As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". Nearly every source we had saying that the crusade involved children came much later, after a few writers referred to the same source w…

Wouldn’t children be useful in terms of doing a bunch of tasks that aren’t worth the time of your soldiers? Ie what was the age of the squires for the soldiers?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#133

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

leetrout wrote: post #6

And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn. > No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn > Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346

Money can be exchanged for goods and services. If you want your house extinguished then pay for it.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#134

Post by at_a_remove »

Other situations exist in which firefighters don't kill themselves (quite literally) over it. Take fast food joints. First, they're notorious for not cleaning their grease traps, but second, many are self-insured. More interestingly, the fast-food companies tend to scrap a building that has had a fire, have it scraped down to the concrete pad, and build again. Source: was just talking with a fire chief about this.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#135

Post by qwytw »

legitster wrote: post #75

This reminds me of when I learned there was no such thing as "The Children's Crusade". As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". Nearly every source we had saying that the crusade involved children came much later, after a few writers referred to the same source w…

> As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children".

While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and children departed Northern France a couple of months before the 'proper' army left.

It wasn't pretty. Along the way they murdered thousands of Jews, sacked or attempted to sack multiple cities and most of those who survived the journey were eventually massacred by the Turks (according to some that's one of the reasons why the Turks were so ill prepared when the actual Crusader army arrived, they expected that all westerners were poorly armed, disorganized and had no understanding or proper warfare... )

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#136

Post by asddubs »

alex028502 wrote: post #56
alex028502 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.

There must be a price that the fire department could theoretically charge if they were gonna always charge on the spot, and still make a profit, as long as there is some minimum number of fires. Also it says that this TN guy had insurance. I wonder if it would have been worth his insurance company's while to make sure that $75 was always paid, either by paying it themselves, or making him pay it, or paying it and sen…

sounds like a good way to encourage arson

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#137

Post by modernerd »

“The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire.

Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’”

-- Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards!

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#138

Post by Spooky23 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #100
bluedino wrote: post #79

We have a ~$200 fee for trash pickup in our municipality. You get the bill every year. If you don't pay it, a 10% penalty is added. The next step, a lien is placed on the property. They never stop picking up the trash, though. The next purchaser of your property has to pay the existing trash bill! This same council raised water rates so they could reduce the penalties for late water bill payments.

Why is trash pickup not bundled with property taxes? It's seems ridiculous to charge for it separately when every occupied home will generate a similar amount of trash.

Sometimes there's other restrictions.

For example,

- In some states there's a cap on property tax increases. So the moving to a fee-model takes it off the tax levy by making it a user fee.

- Bundling trash services with the tax levy is inequitable in that commercial properties are subsidizing services they do not use. A 20 unit apartment building usually has to use a private hauler, for example.

- Some places try to setup consumption based models, where you pay per occupancy unit or even by the bag.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#140

Post by bluGill »

red_phone wrote: post #71
leetrout wrote: post #6

And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn. > No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn > Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346

I grew up in a poor, rural area of the US and can attest that it's true... if you didn't pay the fee (and affix the requisite metal sign below your mailbox) you were on your own in the event of a fire. At that time and place, fire protection wasn't considered a public service unless you lived in town. I never heard anyone question the arrangement and there was little appetite in that era for the tax increase that wou…

That depends on which rural area. I've lived in several rural areas, and we always had automatic fire service provided by the township, it was just another required tax line item. Normally they contracted with the nearest town (I know in one case the township legally owned half the town fire department and paid half the costs, the others I don't know what the details were, just that there was service from the nearest town). I know of townships that don't contract with a nearby town - but then they go in with other rural townships to form a fire department (generally volunteer - farmers sometimes got a call to leave the tractor and fight a fire)
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