There aren’t many things Floridians universally agree with each other on. However, if I were to ask you to describe 2020 in just one word, I’m willing to bet almost everyone would use a negative association. That being said, as I’ve articulated from time to time, I’d much rather ride out the pandemic in South Florida than just about anywhere else. There are numerous reasons why I love it here but just as important as loving where you live, is having the best possible opportunity for a good life where you live. In that regard, Florida’s far from perfect but we’re better than most. That’s evidenced in Florida’s report card from US News & World Report.
US News & World Report is consistently the most rigorous and analytical in pulling together data to determine outcomes so when they produce their annual reports, they mean something, and they make sense. In the annual report, they measured all states across eight core measures: Health Care, Education, Economy, Infrastructure, Opportunity, Fiscal Stability, Crime and Corrections, and Natural environment. Within each of those categories are multiple subsets of related data as well. On balance, there’s a lot to feel good about as Florida ranks as high as #2 in one category but no lower than #38 in any. In fact, Florida is better than average in five of the eight categories. Here’s the breakdown of how Florida compares to other states in 2020 going from worst to best:
- #38: Opportunity
- #31: Crime & Corrections
- #29: Health Care
- #21: Natural Environment
- #14: Infrastructure
- #9: Economy
- #3: Education
- #2: Fiscal Stability
Led by Florida’s balanced budget amendment and consistently conservative leadership over the past two decades, our fiscal stability is about as good as it gets especially over the short term where we rank #1 overall. That’s especially helpful as we look to weather the corona recession and rebound quickly on the other side. If you recall, that’s exactly what happened during the last recession as well despite the housing crisis hitting Florida as hard as any state in the country. We’ve already seen Florida performing far better than most economists predicted going in and it’s more likely than not we’ll prosper as soon as possible once the opportunity is presented to us. Speaking of opportunity that’s our weakest characteristic. Even that’s not all bad. Florida’s actually 10th nationally when it comes to equality. We're weighed down by factors we’re all familiar with, affordability, and as a result economic opportunity. We live where most of the world would like to live. We pay a premium as a result. Overall, Florida’s ranked 13th nationally.
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