[hiknapster]

For those of you that are natives or have lived in Florida for a long time, for those of us that left the state shaking our heads, for those seriously pondering moving to Florida to make a living or retire, this is a MUST read.

It is the unadulterated truth about the state delving into its history up until now.

For the those that can't be bothered to read it, I really think you should, but here are some highlights:

Water Crisis Mortgage Fraud Political Dysfunction Algae Polluted Beaches Declining Crops Failing Public Schools Foreclosures

Greetings from Florida, where the winters are great!

Otherwise, there's trouble in paradise.

Florida's history is lush with volatility and flimflam. As Groucho Marx's real estate huckster warned in The Cocoanuts in 1929, "You can even get stucco! Oh, how you can get stucco." But eventually, the lies always seemed to come true, because there were always new dreamers from cold climates, and worthless swampland was just a drainage canal and a zoning variance away from becoming a golf-course subdivision.


Yet even boosters admit that Florida's Miracle-Gro has created many of its current problems. "We need steady growth, not crazy growth," Crist says. There's a sense that paradise has been ruined by awful traffic, overcrowded schools, overtapped aquifers and polluted beaches. The land of Disney dreams for the middle class is now a high-cost, low-wage state with Mickey Mouse schools and Goofy insurance rates, living beyond its environmental and economic means in harm's way.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...821648,00.html

[runswithscissors]

"Florida was once a swampy rural backwater, the poorest and emptiest state in the South. But in the 20th century, air-conditioning, bug spray and the miracle of water control helped transform it into a migration destination for the restless masses of Brooklyn and Cleveland, Havana and Port-au-Prince. Florida developed its own ventricle at the heart of the American Dream--not only as an affordable playground and comfortable retirement home with no income tax but also as a state of escape and opportunity, a Magic Kingdom for tourists, a Fountain of Youth for seniors, a Cape Canaveral for Northerners looking to launch their second acts"

This article says it all. Escape, playground, retirement....but the "opportunity" part is off...

Or MAYBE the author is just another "malcontent" as several members here have been accused of.

I think not, I think he's more on point with "Fraud, Political Dysfunction, Exploitation, lush with volatility and flimflam, converting the Everglades into a tinderbox and a sewer, ravaging the beaches, bays, lakes and reefs ,awful traffic, overcrowded schools,." and that would point to the residents, not the people moving here.

And let's not forget about Juan Puig, a Cuban immigrant with ties to Pablo Escobar who built a statewide real estate empire, and other honorable "AMERICANS" like the Medellin cartel crowd of cocaine pushers. (footnote article).

It all goes back to Florida being the poorest state in the South with weak education and unsophisticated citizens for the last century IMO. How else can you explain letting your state get so royally screwed up? Poor education and apathy. I wouldn't be in so much of a rush to brag "we were here first".

Nature abhors a vacuum so the worst of all elements have taken over.

[runswithscissors]

And to repeat what everyone with half sense has been saying:

"Florida's prices remain higher than the national average--especially when you count sky-high property taxes and insurance premiums that can be as burdensome as mortgage payments--while its wages are lower."

Now might not be a "GREAT TIME TO BUY" LOLOL

[tallrick]

But it is still better than Latin America, New Jersey, California and NYC...right?

[runswithscissors]

Originally Posted by tallrick

But it is still better than Latin America, New Jersey, California and NYC...right?

LOL, yes, no, no and NO in that order.

'Cept for the beautiful water and sand (and temps of NJ and NYC).


There is so much truth to that Time piece you could spend all day deconstructing it.

[**NoodLes**]

They could have wrote this article a few years ago as well. Its been pretty bad for awhile now.

[tallrick]

It has been bad in Dade county as far as I can remember, but the fools kept coming. After 2001 it spread state-wide. This is probably as bad as it can get in our lifetimes...or is it? The mention of a future hurricane collapsing the insurance industry is a point few seem to think of.

[pianogal]

Thanks for the interesting article. While Florida's GRADUATION rate is between 45-47 out of the 50 states (it varies from year to year), Florida's student's test scores on the ACT and other standardized tests rate around 30 out of the 50 states - not fantastic but not at the the bottom of the heap either. Florida has many wonderful schools with great teachers, however we are also plagued with areas where there is no parental support and many children drop out of school by 16. Most of the time, this is due to a failure of the home and society, the schools can only do so much without the support of the parents.
Children who want to learn, do well in Florida.

While I don't agree with the tone of the article - there is no denying the fact that Florida has allowed out of control growth and profiteers to flourish. Now we are paying the piper. However, I don't know all these people who are so unhappy and can't wait to move....who live under this cloud of doom and gloom.

I especially enjoyed the last paragraph, it was the one redeeming part of the article.

If Florida can reinvent itself, it can be the tip of the American spear, showing the nation how to save water and energy, manage growth, restore ecosystems and retool economies in an era of less. But that will require a new kind of reinvention. "We know how to crash and how to recover," says Miami historian Arva Moore Parks. "We don't seem to know how to learn."


Florida has been good to me and my family. It continues to provide wonderful opportunities for my son and likely my future grandchildren. I pray that we learn from the mistakes of the past. I have seen evidences of care in controlling growth and protecting the environment in my area. I live adjacent to hundreds of acres of environmentally protected land that a few years ago would have been developed.

As attention is brought to bear on our problems, we as individuals must take on the gauntlet, vote for honest, responsible leaders and demand changes be made to insure quality of life for our future and our children's future.

[hiknapster]

Well, painogal, if there are enough of you - a family that has decided to make Florida their home and take responsibility for their surroundings - then Florida can be saved.

When I first moved to Orlando, I saw a city of possibilities. A city that had done a lot of things right and some things wrong. It has a great foundation on which it stands. Orlando still has possibilities.

When I moved to Fort Myers, I was appalled. It was a lesson in what not to do.

Some areas of Florida are like the former and some are like the latter, but what Florida needs are people that care. I think that what bothers me so much is I saw examples of both, and I can see what Florida can be and what it has been turned into, in many places.

Please don't disparage the article. Criticism is what Florida needs, not 60-minute infomercials or people with ulterior motives that don't care about a state that is rapidly becoming ruined.

The author is Michael Grunwald is a reporter for The Washington Post. He has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Award for investigative reporting and numerous other prizes, including the Society of Environmental Journalists award for his reporting on the Everglades. He lives in Washington, D.C.

[BlueWillowPlate]

Well, Florida's ups and downs have certainly been cyclical, practically since the first settler appeared.
In 1981, TIME declared crime- and drug-plagued South Florida a "Paradise Lost...."
...lifers like seventh-generation Floridian Allison DeFoor--lawyer, lobbyist, historian, Episcopal minister, environmental consultant and Republican operative--are disinclined to panic just yet. "Sure, it's the end of Florida as we know it," DeFoor quips. "It's always the end of Florida as we know it....
Florida's history is lush with volatility and flimflam...
"We need steady growth, not crazy growth," Crist says.
This most recent decline was almost predictable. I don't have a problem with the article; I think some of the general problems mentioned are to be found elsewhere, but Florida in many ways is one of a kind.
I do think we are a wacky state; there is no place quite like Florida.
As Crist says, we need steady growth. Sustainability.
I agree about our need to control water use, too. Some of the stuff I've seen around here would never fly in Colorado.
We have no plans to leave. But riding this latest mess out, well, it won't be a piece of cake. I hope Florida can indeed reinvent itself, in 21st century terms.