Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, on flood insurance increases:

You really need to know only two things about the federal flood-insurance program to evaluate its wisdom. First, many owners say they couldn’t afford to have homes so close to the shore without the substantial subsidy. Second, the Obama administration considers it too socialistic.

Last year, Craig Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that runs the program, said the administration wanted to move away from “subsidizing rates” to “a capitalist, private-sector model of managing risk.” You know things have gone too far when the current White House wants a greater degree of laissez-faire.

Two years ago, Congress considered legislation that would have raised rates rapidly to market levels. Beneficiaries raised unholy heck. The other day, President Barack Obama signed legislation to increase rates more gradually.

Those hikes are still steep ”“ as high as 18 percent a year. But their very steepness testifies to how out of tune the subsidized policies had become. Washington ”“ meaning the taxpayers ”“ is $24 billion in the hole because of them. In essence, that means the federal government has spent $24 billion encouraging riskier choices than people would otherwise make.

Homeowners faced with whopping premium increases ”“ including a few hundred of them here in central Virginia ”“ deserve sympathy. Politicians put down a rug and are now pulling it out from under them. That is the painful price of correcting a policy that never should have existed in the first place.