The meaning of Florida | Financial Times

Florida is the original American Swamp. It represents much that is fascinating and fun about the US (multiculturalism, natural beauty, creativity, a sense of humour), but also many things that are problematic, from rampant corruption to destabilising economic bifurcation to an utter lack of fatalism about climate change.

Last year, while travelling to a conference in South Beach, I noticed water rising in the street. By the time we were three blocks from the hotel, it was high enough to soak the sandals of people on the pavement. When my taxi driver got to the venue, I had to roll up my jeans to wade across the street to the beachfront hotel. Despite these clear indications that the coastline has a sell-by date, there were new condos going up all around me. I asked the taxi driver what he thought about it all. “The weather is definitely getting worse,” he said. “But I think the people that buy these things have so much money that they don’t care if the buildings are washed away in 20 years.”

I guess that’s good, because it’s becoming nearly impossible to buy reasonable insurance in the state, thanks to all the hurricanes. Florida premiums are rising at 33 per cent a year, compared to the national average of 7 per cent. That hasn’t stopped people from building, or moving, there — the population of Florida went up 15 per cent from 2010-20. This reflects a broader US trend of both population and power flowing west and south. A report by the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School released last week shows that all of the top 20 fastest-growing metro areas in 2022 were in those areas (Florida cities including Tampa, Jacksonville and Orlando made the list).

As I wrote in a column last year, “the economic fallout of Covid-19, coupled with the fear of rising taxes, regulation and more left-leaning politics in New York and California have collided to turn the usual flock of snowbirds into a larger migration of wealth from north to south. Miami in particular has become the destination for what some are calling a mass ‘techxodus’. Executives from digital hubs such as San Francisco, Boston and New York City are relocating to what they view as a more pro-business locale. Blackstone, Elliott Management, Icahn Enterprises, Citadel and Goldman Sachs have joined Japanese group SoftBank and numerous start-ups from the San Francisco Bay Area in moving jobs and investment to South Florida.”

Now, post-midterm elections, Florida’s newly re-elected governor Ron DeSantis is looking like he may be the next Republican candidate for president (assuming he can best Donald Trump, should Trump run), and the state itself is solidly red. It’s almost as if Florida has become the anti-woke, libertarian answer to the post-neoliberal world, a place where people can go if they want to escape any form of communal responsibility. Sometimes I think, between the latest tropical storm, gun violence, the collapse of the crypto market and the rise of far-right politics, how long can the Swamp survive? It feels dangerously extreme and unstable. Other times I worry it is a more permanent marker of where America is headed. Ed, what’s your bet?

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Edward Luce responds

Rana, I think you do a great job of encapsulating what Florida means and what it is becoming. The fact that tax exiles are flocking to a coastline with a fast diminishing shelf life at least partly answers your question. It has always been my view that if you choose your home based on its tax rate then you are a person without soul (though that prejudice only works up to a point — every soul has its price limit).

Though I always love being in Miami, and greatly appreciate the Everglades, something about the larger Floridian way of doing things has always made me uneasy. That was just as true when it was a swing state as it is now that it has become a red state. Maybe it’s the loud shirts, or the endless suburban despoliation of beauty. Perhaps it is all those Trump Towers brimming with tax exiles and Russians. More likely, it’s the state’s ruthless indifference to inequality, which is among the worst in the US. So I don’t think Florida should be a model for anyone, not least because of the state’s complete indifference to global warming. If Florida were a cruise ship, it would be the Titanic.

There has been a lot of fuss about DeSantis because he’s the most plausible Trump-slayer on the Republican horizon. But I wonder how well his anti-charismatic style of politics will travel outside of the state. My guess is that Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin is underrated. I will be paying just as much attention to him as DeSantis. But I will be paying even more attention to Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer whose broader state election results on Tuesday were just as triumphant as DeSantis’ in Florida but who has so far garnered far less media attention. Whitmer must surely now be one of the leading Democratic presidential contenders. Meanwhile, if you pay any attention to the changing climate, which I suspect is not at the forefront of most tax exiles’ minds, the Great Lakes region would be an optimal place to move.

Your feedback

And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “Why the media got it wrong again”:
“Since the rise to power of the far right was confirmed by the election of Trump in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK, many people on the political left and centre — people who hitherto took little interest in politics — have become activists. I am amongst them as are many of my friends on both sides of the Atlantic. I fear we are sadly ineffective at changing minds but we do convince people to vote: people who would otherwise not have bothered. Almost as sadly, those we convince to vote are not motivated by desire for their candidate but by deep-seated fear of the alternative. Heaven is never on offer but hell must be avoided.” — Helen Holdsworth, Cambridge, UK