Posted on 09/07/2009 7:33:29 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
Catching On To Florida's Economic 'Ponzi Scheme'
by Diane Roberts
September 6, 2009 Listen to the Story
A nearly empty beach in Hollywood, Fla.
A nearly empty beach in Hollywood, Fla. Tourism in the state declined 9.4 percent over the same period last year, Florida's tourism marketing agency reported.
September 6, 2009
For the first time since World War II, Florida is losing population. University of Florida demographers recently reported that the number of residents dropped by more than 58,000 last year.
Florida has always had a tenuous relationship with reality. In the 1880s, we convinced the ailing and infirm that Florida was good for their health, despite the mosquitoes and the suffocating heat. In the 1920s, we sold swampland to Yankees, promising that with just a little draining and a little fill dirt, it could be paradise. We call ourselves the "Sunshine State," never mind that it rains an awful lot.
The rest of America sold corn, cotton, iron or coal. Florida sold itself. When you retired you were going to where there was no snow to shovel, where you could pick oranges off trees growing in your backyard, and flowers bloomed in winter. Taxes were low; living was high. Florida was Eden on the cheap.
It was bound to catch up with us. Gary Mormino, a distinguished historian of Florida, says our whole economy is more or less a big Ponzi scheme. The state funds its roads and schools by bringing in new investors — that is, new residents — to pay sales taxes and property taxes. When nobody can afford a condo in Boca, when tourists stop coming even for a week at Disney World, the Ponzi scheme collapses.
Now it seems as though everybody here knows somebody who has left, is leaving or wants to leave. Even the governor wants to leave — for Washington, D.C. He's running for the U.S. Senate after one term.
I'm not too upset people are bailing out of Florida. I never believed in the state religion that growth was good. Florida will be poorer, but quieter. The old inhabitants will be just fine. Bees are colonizing empty houses in bankrupt suburbs. Alligators and frogs are taking up residence in abandoned swimming pools. Wetlands will reassert themselves, muscadine vines, spiderwort and pickerel weed will overrun the golf courses, and panthers will dance again in the forests. Maybe one day kudzu will enfold Cinderella's castle in its pitiless green embrace.
Here, Nature always wins. After all, Florida was the last part of the North American continent to emerge from the sea, and, when the waters rise again, Florida will be the first to return.
Diane Roberts is author of Dream State, a history of Florida.
Nope just a another negative growth marxist wrapped in a tree hugging cloak.
Too many him-a-canes, too little time.
Yeah, people are longing for Michigan.
The historian would be better off reporting the long-term history of socialism, rather than some temporary lull in the Sunshine State.
No sane person wants to live in Haiti. And that's what South Florida is becoming.
Those who can leave are.
The last paragraph betrays this broad’s real agenda.
Another Gaea worshipper.
Actually now Americans and Cubans can visit cuba without restraint......I suspect you will find a lot of those who left Florida, in Cuba...?
A few years ago, I was listening to a radio program in the Florida Keys. Their thesis was that the Keys should return to nature. A town would be at Key West, Marathon, and at Key Largo. Everything else was to return to nature.
I was talking to a resident of the Keys a few years back, and I was stunned to hear that she could not fence her yard ( she had a kindergarden aged child) because it would interrupt the alligators moving about. She had to meet the school bus to insure that no alligators would be there. Check the rules about septic systems. You will be amazed.
Yes, we live in a wonderful world constructed by the environmental anarchists. Stand by for more. I suspect it will be better to freeze in you house in the winter than to burn carbon to “pollute” the atmosphere. Etc.
Immigration, legal and illegal, is destroying FL in much the same way that it destroyed CA.
Seems she watched the History Channel’s “Life After People” programs and liked what she saw. If she (and others of her ilk) thinks Nature without out humans is so great, then why doesn’t she take herself out? Another liberal who knows what is best of “us.”
Yankee go home
However, the baby boomers are close to retirement so condo building will come back — until they are almost gone.
An outdoor pool in Florida has always been an attractant to reptile critters.
Its the taxes.. and the uppities from the North who want to tell everyone how to live that ruined Florida. They screwed up New York.. so they retire down here and make a bigger mess. Can’t landscape your own yard without asking someone, can’t own a vehicle that might “upset the visual standards of the community” (forget the NEW pickup). More “can’t do its” than you can shake a stick at. Lets not forget “impact fees”, in many areas $25,000 before you can even think about building anything on the lot you bought.
I moved to “communist” Eastern Europe.. more freedom there. Thats Sad.
Seems like every other house in the Panhandle area where I live (Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties) are for sale and/or foreclosure. Times are tough in this area.
Why is it that people who move here complain the whole time. Yes it’s hot, humid and it rains everyday in the summer. If you hate it, go back home to your snow, state income taxes and overpriced houses. We’ll be thinking about you when we are wearing shorts on Christmas Day and swimming in our backyard pools in March.
Back when we had 3% unemployment (which was most of the past 20 yrs) everyone flocked here. Crowding our schools and our roads. Now that you have to try a little harder to keep your job, everyone is bailing. Good riddance.
Florida will be fine. Because, despite the occasional hurricane, it really is paradise here.
Her analogy is way off base. Florida has challenges but its finances are not a Ponzi scheme. Florida had a real estate bubble comparable to other tourist dependent states. Florida has diversified its economy but tourism is still an important industry.
Ponzi scheme comparisons should not be overused. We have enough Ponzi schemes that applying loosing devalues the meaning. Federal entitlement spending is a Ponzi scheme enforced by the power of government. The only way to perpetuate a Ponzi scheme is through the power of government. However, even government power has its limits as we will witness in the coming decades.
The crash in real estate values has exposed the greed of the little tyrants in the County Tax Appraisers office.
Even though property values have fallen big time, the countys are still raising the tax assessments and therefore the property taxes on non homestead properties, even though by state law, they are supposed to tax these properties at “fair market value”
Plenty of NONHOMESTEAD properties in Marion County(Ocala) have had their property taxes more than TRIPLE in the last 4 years and they still go up every year!
Homestead properties however have been given a sop by the County and have had their taxable values decline with the market.
Divide and conquer. Give the homeowners some relief and they will be happy. Dump on the non homestead propertys, vacant lots, commercial, etc, to cover the runaway spending from the last 5 years.
Although, you can appeal your property taxes, Sept 15 is the deadline. Everyone who is over assesed should appeal and clog up the county appeal boards to send them a message!
TAX REVOLT! TAX REVOLT!
APPEAL YOUR PROPERTY TAXES BY SEPT 15!
If it weren’t NPR it might have a scintilla of credibility...
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