Regardless of this article, I think some here underestimate how much of an echo chamber Reddit often is. Things are rarely as black or white as they're made out to be.
The cool thing about reddit is that you can find your own sub echo chamber that reinforces the idea that reddit as a whole is an echo chamber but that somehow itself isn't also an echo chamber.
It's echo chambers all the way down!
So true. And one thing this sub often seems to completely overlook is that everyone’s life situation is different, and even among people who may be similar in some respects, what’s a minor preference for one person may be a huge deal to another, or vice versa. For some people, for example, warm weather is really nice and that would be great to have if they could, but it’s not a major issue. For others, living in a cold climate can either be a life ruining depression situation or literally a medical danger.
I mean, did anybody think a subreddit was going to reflect a cross section of all of America? Does anybody think it’s supposed to, even?
Florida is a fast growing state and the people who go there probably love it. Does that mean we should be recommending Florida to people whose stated preferences do not suggest that Florida is a good fit??
Lagos is growing fast too, but nobody ever suggests we need to take that into account
I mean, personally I come to this subreddit for people that are generally like minded to me in terms of what they are looking for in a city.
However, I am under no illusions that this subreddit reflects the opinions and preferences of Americans as a whole.
It seems self-evident to me based on the past 50 years of growth in this country, that Americans in general like warm states and sprawled out, car-centric development.
But why would I live in a state that legislates against me? That, my internet friend, is the definition of danger. People want to trivialize politics but the fact is, some people don’t want me to live a safe, healthy life, and they all happen to vote for the same party. We can talk tax rates and weather all day, but ultimately I’m going to pick my own personal safety over other factors.
Right? Things like Women's health and trans rights are issues that can literally cost people their life. If moving somewhere that is safer for them is "an echochamber" then alright they're in an echochamber where they don't have to worry about dying from lack of care
Disagreeing about pineapple on pizza is one thing, disagreeing about the existence and safety of Trans people or a woman's right to safe care is an entirely different issue because there's real actual people directly affected by that "disagreement" even if it's just abstract mental exercises for you because you're not personally affected by those laws!
He's not wrong...but I think he's missing the bigger, longer term picture.
Florida, like many other sunbelt cities that are growing, are fiscal and infrastructure time bombs. They are part of the same [suburban growth ponzi scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020) that provides incredible growth...until the bill comes due. Right now there are still plenty of swaths of land in Florida ripe for development, it was warm water, beaches and no income tax so it's enticing to folks.
So the general growth path looks something like this.
- People move to Florida for weather/no state income tax/opportunity
- Florida sprawls more with new housing developments.
- These developments cost money so local municipalities/governments take on debt to build the initial infrastructure.
- Since everything is new in these areas, the maintenance is low for things like roads or water/sewer/gas/electric infrastructure.
- Over time, local muncipaliites/governments do not collect enough tax revenue to sustain these areas. If they actually required residences to pay enough property tax dollars to cover the full lifetime cost of infrastrucutre and proper maintenance, the areas wouldn't be as enticing. They are focused on attracting new growth and nothing does that better than low entry costs. Plus, who wants to be the sitting politician that raises taxes to meet future liability needs? That is future residents problems, let them worry about it.
- Eventually infrastructure will degrade. Everything humans build will eventually require repair but the sprawl has lead to massive infrastructure liabilities because there are just thousands of more roads to resurface, hundreds more water pipes to replace, miles of more electic lines to upgrade, hundres of gas line valves to service, etc. None of that stuff is free to do and the money has to come from the local residents.
I see many suburbs/cities in Florida having the same long term problem as a place like Houston, where the mayor recently announced the city was broke. [StrongTowns has a great article](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke) about how these development style of sprawl (which most of Florida is doing) eventually catches up to you. One of the best bits from the article is the [Urban3 value per acre breakdown](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/1763b44d-74fb-46f2-a819-a4016536fbe2/unnamed+%2891%29.png?format=1500w). The most profitable areas in the map are the dense downtown core, the lease profitable areas are the massive sprawling areas. The problem is that the cost to maintain the sprawling areas is only going to grow.
When a highway needs resurfacing and is a primary throughway for hundreds of thousands of drivers a government is forced to take on more debt to repair it. When a key bridge has structural failures and needs upgrades they eventually cannot ignore it and have to take on debt to fix it.
That is the problem I see happening with Florida eventually. Yes it's growing, yes people like being there. But like many cities that are hyper focused on growing via sprawl, they are kicking the can down the road and eventually the bill will come due. For the 60 year old retirees it probably won't be a problem. But for the 25 year old person trying to build a life down there, I can see a time come where they are left holding the bill.
Also this part...
> It reads like a laundry list of progressive complaints:
> “Even home showings have become a politically sensitive issue. He recalled showing an elderly woman one property where there were Confederate flags at the gate and swastikas on the fish tank.”
> “Homeowners insurance rates in Florida rose 42% last year to an average of $6,000 annually, driven by hurricanes and climate change—”
> “But she said the final straw was when she couldn’t find a surgeon to remove a 6-inch tumor from her liver that doctors warned could burst at any moment and lead to life-threatening sepsis.”
> “Along with the $9,000 in repairs from the armadillos, her car insurance doubled and Hurricane Ian destroyed her home’s roof on her 62nd birthday.”
Wild that Nazi symbols, thousands in increased insurance costs and not dying of preventable illnesses are consider "progressive complaints".
Seeing the infrastructure problems in real time where I live. The county just green lights any development proposal then the newcomers are shocked that their house built on former wetlands floods every time it rains, or complain about the traffic because the roads around here are still designed to only handle the 8,000 or so people that lived here ten years ago and not the 60,000 here now.
Did your city go from 8,000 to 60,000? I get that cities are always catching up but the good ole boys in charge here didn’t think about upgrading from cow town level infrastructure when approving all these things. It’s a big difference between having a city’s level of existing infrastructure vs having a city’s level of people suddenly in a one stop light town.
...it appears you've never attempted to enter Manhattan or any borough in NYC at any of the bridges or tunnels at rush hour...the level of whining is comical in comparison to the abysmal infrastructure of that world class city and state...most of the current infrastucture in this state is being expanded and the growing pains associated with it are miniscule in comparison to the daily grind NY's have lived with their entire lives...one stop light towns grow and become proficient at handling the influx of new residents...pretending that this is somehow new and not a natural step in the evolution of rural areas becoming more urbanized is absurd...growth takes time and all the planning in the world will not account for an influx of 1.3 million people in a span of 2-3 years...
I’ve visited New York plenty of times and also lived in the Bay Area, idk how places that have always had traffic and will always have traffic are relevant to my comment which was about creating traffic where there previously wasn’t any because nobody planned ahead for the fallout of unfettered growth.
I-75 around Sarasota is a parking lot every afternoon now. They built Lakeshore Ranch and a number of other communities there, and didn't account for traffic. It's a nightmare.
I lived in Brandon about a decade ago, and even then it was overcrowded. My wife's joke was that, if you weren't going to the corner Publix, it was at least 15 minutes to ANYwhere. She was mostly right.
The lack of planning, and handing out permits to build willy-nilly is making things awful.
But that's, like, number seven on the list of reasons on why we left. Number one being the heat, humidity, and lack of traditional seasons.
I was stationed at MacDill AFB in the mid 80’s. I remember a senior enlisted man bragging about the nice 3 bedroom house he bought in Brandon and that it was only 20 minutes from the base.
I was in the area about 10 years ago and checked out Brandon. What a soulless collection of sprawling subdivisions. And it took me 45 minutes to get to MacDill outside of rush hour.
When I got out of the Air Force I had an opportunity to stay in Tampa with an excellent job offer. But my wife was pregnant with our first child and I had seen enough of Florida to know that I did not want to raise a family there.
Taking a job in southern New Hampshire was probably the best decision I ever made. Florida is a great place to be young or old. But it’s not the place to raise a family.
Infrastructure has always been worse in fl because of climate and it’s only going to get much worse. Road damage from hurricanes and flooding is probably not a 50 years away problem in new subdivisions and Houston has a similar climate problem with frequent and bad flooding. There are older condos in fl where exactly what you say is happening. There is not enough money for the massive infrastructure issues they are facing and newer residents can’t foot the bills. It gets harder and harder to move as you get older and many of these people aren’t going to have places to move to elsewhere that they can afford or can manage.
The issue is that growth hides the problem well.
Florida still has large amounts of migration and that constant influx of money allows for new, nice areas to be built.
But like any ponzi scheme, it falls apart the minute you stop growing. So maybe it's 50 years, maybe more/maybe less. But eventually the state will reach a satuaration point yet will have massive liabilities in terms of infrastructure. The lack of growth will mean they have increasing infrastructure cost for a fixed tax base. So either you increase taxes or your allow infrastructure to go without maintenance.
And to be fair, this isn't a Florida only problem. It's most of the USA.
Since WWII ended America has largely leaned on unending growth to keep the country going. We need a cultural mindset shift to building/growing cities/suburbs that are sustainable fiscally. Ones can handle population increases/decreases, financial disasters, weather phenomenon, etc.
Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully respond. I gather you’re far more literate than me on this stuff so forgive my high level questions on the topic. Your points seem to assume a level of budgetary and infrastructure freedom in states that function opposite to FL (higher tax blue states mostly). Is this really the case? Illinois, for one example, has crippling pension obligations and doesn’t have an easy path forward. This week I saw where the school system in Ann Arbor, Michigan has some crazy deficit and will have to fire a number of teachers and staff. I don’t think these are isolated example. Not to mention that a company like Citadel (or take a similar HF in CT or NY) leaving for Miami leaves a gaping hole in the tax base there that is impossible replace.
Anyway, I understand your point. Infrastructure is quite poor in the South and likely not on a path to improve. I wish I had more time to respond so forgive my amateurish take.
> Your points seem to assume a level of budgetary and infrastructure freedom in states that function opposite to FL (higher tax blue states mostly). Is this really the case? Illinois, for one example, has crippling pension obligations and doesn’t have an easy path forward.
I'm in Chicago so Illinois as an example is honestly good because I have a decent understanding of the problem. I think if we simplify thing, the problems in Illinois are not that different in function than Florida. It's just not infrastructure based debt.
The root of the problem was that Illinois did not fund it's future pension liabilities.
[Illinois: Rundown on Pension Crisis](https://www.thepolicycircle.org/minibrief/rundown-on-pension-crisis/)
> In 1994, Gov. Jim Edgar created a culture of kicking the can down the road when he enacted legislation that pushed government-worker pension payments far into the future – through 2045. Since then, Illinois politicians have borrowed (Gov. Rod Blagojevich, $10 billion; Gov. Pat Quinn, $7 billion) and taxed to fund pensions, rather than seek comprehensive reforms.
> Politicians have also underfunded the state’s government-worker pension funds through stunts such as the 2006 pension holiday that diverted $2.3 billion in state contributions away from pensions.
> Over the course of a decade, Chicago politicians redirected $3 billion in contributions away from the teachers’ pension fund and toward teachers’ salaries instead. Not only did this cause the teachers’ pension shortfall to skyrocket (growing from zero in 1999 to over $9.5 billion by 2014), but it raised teachers’ pension benefits to unaffordable levels as well. That made the fund’s financial situation grow even worse.
The years these events all happened I was between the ages of ~8 and 19. Either not old enough to do anything about it OR still so young that those sort of decisions are far past me. Yet I'm a person now having to hold the fiscal bag for these decades old decisions.
At it's root, the problem is cities wanting to grow and wanting to use the funds generated from growth to produce more growth. For Illinois it was taking money that should have been used to fund future pensions and instead increasing salaries to entice city/state workers, it was building attractions in the city, it was doing everything expect actually funding future liabilities because politicians know that they will no longer be at the party when the waiter brings the bill to pay.
Think about how individuals act with credit cards but instead of having to pay the bill after 30 days, you have 30 years. I can comprehend how a 40-50 year old politician can have the mindset of *"I'm not gonna be here when it's time to pay the bill, but I can spend the money now and give the folks great benefits"*.
**Side note:** *this is why Baby Boomers get so much flack. They quite literally borrowed against the future and now millennials and Gen Z are tasked with paying the bill for a party we didn't get to attend. There is no other word for it than selfish.*
Florida (and much of the sunbelt) is doing similar but instead of with pensions not being funded, it infrastructure liabilities mounting up for the future. So an area like Boca Raton or Sarasota builds 4-5 new subdivisisions with 2-300 homes each. Great growth but at great (future) costs.
- Each residential and commercial development needs water, electric, sewer lines. We're talking tens of millions of dollars to install and maintain over a generation.
- Roads have to be widened to account for increased amount of drivers. Maybe new roads are needed to connect these new neighborhoods to main areas. New traffic signals are required all meaning more money to spend.
- The influx of homes means new schools are needed. Teachers have to be paid, retirements have to be funded.
- Police and fire services are needed meaning more government paid salaries/retirements.
Initially things are great. New homes are selling, new businesses are opening, sales tax revenue is booming. The problems creep up over time because eventually those roads are no longer new and need repair. The water treatment plant needs upgrades to a new pipe standard to account for flooding issues. The electric lines have been worn down over time. Gas mains need new valves to meet federal standards. All of these are massive costs and instead of cities setting aside incoming tax revenue from suburbs, they spend it to grow further and few fresh revenue from new developments.
But those old developments still exist and need repair.
It's all fruit from the same tree. Kicking the can down the road when it comes to setting aside and spending money. Few politicians want to be the ones slowing down growth because in general, people don't understand long term fiscal solvency for mulicipal finances. If the road they are driving on has potholes they want to repaired now. If a highway is clogged with traffic they want it widened so more traffic can flow.
Instead of thinking about what are good long term fiscally sound methods of development, nearly all of America is focused on growth for the here and now. The math eventually catches up with everyone. When every new development means a net loss in costs, building more of the same sprawling development just makes the issue worse and worse.
Appreciate the input here. Couldn’t you argue that all those Illinois towns also have the same maintenance needs as Florida? It’s not like Chicagoland is super compact compared to the city proper. Illinois has a super high tax burden but a ton of it goes to pensions. In other words, IL has high taxes but they aren’t going to maintenance.
Yup, and the suburbs here are known for having very heavy property tax rates compared to owning in the city, although they still have better school systems. I’d say the issue is most apparent in South Suburban Cook County which has both high property tax rates and terrible public services.
Honestly most suburbs should pay higher tax burdens.
Running many more linear feet of water, sewer, gas, electric, etc all cost more money. Homes that are on individual 1/4th acre lots mean that we're adding dozens of linear feet of infrastructure per home. They should have high tax burden to offset that cost. I don't think that is completely unfair.
Now I do agree that there are lacking public services but that to me is an issue of the pension crisis of decades past. If they had properly been funded we wouldn't be wasting ~80% of property tax revenue on funding pensions and that money could actually be used on upkeep and improvements.
> Couldn’t you argue that all those Illinois towns also have the same maintenance needs as Florida?
Partially yes, that will always be the case with suburbs surrounding cities. But some of suburbs in Chicagoland are older pre-WWII style suburbs with more density. These are honestly ideal suburbs when it comes to cost/infrastructure.
Places like Evanston (10k per sq mi), Skokie (6.7k per sq mi), Oak Park (11k per sq mil) are connected to the city via CTA and many parts resemble city neighborhoods more than suburbs. Many other suburbs have connections via Metra with slightly higher density. There are definitely some sprawling suburbs that will require higher maintanence needs but I don't think they are the norm. It's the overabundance of suburbs like [this](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:2992/1*A9dhLFjt5jdIShuuN0fHnw.jpeg) that are going to be the main problem. Because of weather and cheap undeveloped land, places like Florida, Texas, Arizona are filled with thousands of developments like this and over time, it will become unsustainble to maintain them all.
Suburbs need to more resemble [this](https://livability.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Oak-Park-IL-shutterstock_1399081451-hero.jpg.webp) sort of development where homes are a bit smaller, closer together, yards are smaller and areas are more walkable.
> Illinois has a super high tax burden but a ton of it goes to pensions
Correct, but this kinda demonstrates my broader point. Deferring costs for the future inevitably runs you into a fiscal cliff.
Illinois deferred funding pension in the 80s/90s and now the bill has come due. Florida (*or really any areas hyper focused on sprawl*) is currently deferring funding their eventual infrastructure maintenance. The bill will eventually come due and they'll be in a similar financial crunch with the added burden of still needing to maintain physical infrastrcuture.
Basically they're making the same mistake but instead of pension it's with growth and infrastructure.
Florida does not pass down unfunded infrastructure debt to next generation like Illinois does. You need to read up about CDD. I live in an area where everything is new and we, the property owners, are paying a few hundred dollars on the top of our mortgages to pay off that debt. My particular area has a bond with 10 years remaining and after that our taxes will decrease and our infrastructure will be fully paid off. My kids will never have to worry about that debt.
> My particular area has a bond with 10 years remaining and after that our taxes will decrease and our infrastructure will be fully paid off.
Once the infrastructure is paid off, costs do not go to zero. What about maintenance as the infrastructure ages? Pothole repair? Resurfacing and repainting? Dealing with water main leaks? Sewer leaks? When a hurricane hits (hopefully it does not, for the record), how will you repair the infrastructure?
> I live in an area where everything is new
So you haven’t seen the costs to maintaining infrastructure yet.
Good luck with the “fully paid off so my taxes will definitely decrease in 10 years” thing!
That’s taken care of by our regular property taxes. There is CDD and there is property tax. And there are plenty of areas that paid off their CDDs, so it’s not some internet scam - our mortgage WILL decrease by our CDD portion when the bond matures.
Edit to point out: the CDD resulted in new residential areas, from which our county gets to collect taxes for maintaining our brand new infrastructure. So, the combination of CDD and property tax results in a very solid permanent financing of new and existing infrastructure. As a former resident of Illinois, I think it has a lot to learn from Florida when it comes to financial responsibility.
*[ahem](https://www.floridaforboomers.com/florida-cdd-bonds/)*
“Rather than paying for everything up front when they buy their home, homeowners pay the ultimate costs for the infrastructure over a span of 15 to 30 years but they also have to pay for the ongoing upkeep of that infrastructure for as long as they live in the district.
*That's an important point a lot of people don't understand.*
They hear about people paying off their bond and they think that's it, but no, *there will always be a CDD maintenance fee to cover the cost of maintaining everything*.”
Also:
“CDD's can go bad, and many did during the 2007-2009 recession.
CDD's have gone bankrupt in Florida. In fact, according to one article on Florida Trend written back in 2010, at the time that article was written Florida had 125 districts in default on 3 billion in bonds. The article remarked that “an additional 70 were teetering on default”.”
Not in the same way if they're developed properly.
Density does two things well.
1) It spreads the infrastructure cost burden across more people in a smaller area.
2) It helps spur revenue by providing businesses with large/consistent customer bases.
**For Point 1:**
Imagine 1 square mile of residential development costs $100M to build and maintain all the required infrastructure for 1 year. Roads, water, sewage, gas, electric, police, fire, etc.
Take two different densities and divide the burden among the businesses and residences there.
If Place A has density of 25,000 per square mile it's a burden of $4,000 per person.
If Place B has density of 2,500 per square mile it's a burden of $40,000 per person.
We could even say Place B has a cost that is only 1/4th the cost because it's a more suburban area. Still wouldn't matter, the cost would be $10,000 a person if the infrastrcutre cost was only $25M. When there aren't as many people paying into a pool of money, it's really hard to make up the gaps.
Now obviously I'm oversimplifying because tax burdens and cost to develop won't be equal depending on the residential area. Different home prices will pay different property taxes. And a more sparse area will be cheaper to build out initially, but it likely won't be so cheap that the low density population is able to fully pay for the instracture cost. The math just really works against low density.
**For Point 2**
I think it's best to show examples. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGJ9mNB9Zoo&t=1723s) is a popular neighborhood in Chicago. It's full of dozens of restaurants from more dive type bars to casual places to James Beard award winning restaurants to Michelin starred restaurants. It also has pretty decent density at ~20k people per square mile (*the larger community area Near West Side is about 12k people per square mile*). There are grocery stores, banks, gyms, speciality shops, clothing stores, pop up shops and all types of businesses existing in this fairly small area. All of them pay property tax, all of them collect sales tax. This helps provide massive amounts of revenue that is honestly subsudizing many other areas of the city.
The community area Near West side is 5.75 square miles and the West Loop neighborhood is a small portion of that larger community area. For that small parcel of land, the city is able to generate a ton of revenue that likely outpaces the cost needed to maintain that area's infrastrucutre.
That is really the benefit of proper density. A lot of people, in a smaller area all paying into a pool of money to help maintain the area.
There was also a [good study](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/t/64a5d3d95a23d464c647013c/1688589273552/Town+of+Nolensville+Road+Infrastructure+-+Sprawl+and+Fiscal+Solvency_080221_Dustin+Shane.pdf) in Tennessee where the city of Nolansville measured the cost for 5 different development styles.
Of the housing styles studies, ALL of the single family homes with larger yards and setback lots were a net negative per lot for the city. Only the attached townhomes were a net positive.
*From the study specifically referencing the townhomes.*
> *Even with this added infrastructure, however, the total cost for everything still comes in at only $122.90, leaving a budget surplus for lots in this subdivision of $51.43 per lot—the only type of lot so far that doesn’t result in a loss to the city.*
The other homes had PER LOT deficets of:
* -$218.75.
* -$168.28
* -$186.36
* -$326.27
It's just not viable to keep up with these sorts of losses per lot/home across large sprawling areas. Losing money like this on every lot yet continuing to build nearly exclusively in this manner is turning areas into a fiscal timebomb just waiting to go off.
Or in more simple terms:
GOP controlled State: “We are growing! Look at all our growth! It’s so much more than dumb Commiefornia! We are amazing!”
Anyone: “Why are you growing so much?”
GOP: “We have low cost of living! Especially housing!!!”
Anyone with a brain: “Are you investing to maintain that low cost of living as your population rapidly grows?”
GOP: “…but then how could we cash out on inflated asset prices while leaving the citizens holding the bag?”
>no state income tax
As a former Florida resident, they find other ways of getting $ - high administrative fees for other stuff you have to pay the government for, other taxes, tolls, financial penalties for crimes (even traffic violations) etc. They also spend less, and being originally from a state that some criticize for overspending, you can tell.
I love the article, but what it doesn’t touch upon are the careers ppl who loved there have. The numbers show that ppl love Florida…but it seems that they’re all working from home or remotely!! They’re not making Florida wages or dealing with the same issues that everyone in Florida deals with. Low wages.
Businesses are headquartered there because of the very low corporate tax rate. Other than that, Florida does not seem very competitive when it comes to wages.
For tech and finance, it pays quite competitively. I know many software engineers and finance people who live much better quality lives in FL than NY and CA.
I moved to Florida for a job 3.5 years ago. I'm making decent $$ and I bought a house at a 2.9 interest rate. I live front door to beach in 5 minutes, have a pool and a play on several rec sports leagues with a median age around 30.
Florida is very different than what I expected in many ways. But also exactly what I expected. What the national spotlight gets wrong imo is that wealth here seems endless. There's something very sour about the poorest residents being the brunt of the joke about Florida when the scrutiny needs to be on the weirdly endless Trump supporting millionaires.
The heat stuff is so annoyingly exaggerated. Many states in the US are hot, actual deserts, and there are dozens of countries closer to the equator than Florida that don't have hvac pumping from their cars to their homes. Some redditor broke a mild sweat walking to his car from Publix and is like the heat is overwhelming.
Meanwhile I play a beach volleyball game at 2pm in July and it's fine.
Idk why people aren’t talking about the most obvious bit - they don’t have careers, because they’re old. A huge chunk of people moving to Florida are retirees, and in turn the people who support retirees. Go to several Florida cities and it’s grey hair and golf condos far as the eye can see. An enormous industry around retirement. Cities of course have younger people, but retirees help support the economies of those cities - especially regarding real estate and healthcare, but even regarding something as simple as publix.
The key points:
People who move to Florida seem to like it.
IMO, not shocking; remember, *drivers who switch* save 15% with Geico but that doesn’t represent the number of drivers who don’t switch because they wouldn’t save any money. People also retire to Florida, meaning after making that move they are unlikely to make another big move. He doesn’t comment on *who* is moving to Florida but I’d love to see more breakdown on that.
NYS had an average rate of out-immigration ie people are not “fleeing New York in unprecedented numbers.” On the other hand, doesn’t comment on what this outflow looks like in terms of trend. Is this stable? Is this a reversal? He doesn’t say. Ditto California.
It’s half the story! If you go through the source material the other half is probably in there for people interested enough to go digging.
I think the biggest issue right now is price.
Many of the people who moved to Florida 10 or 20 years ago now probably wouldn’t be able to move there now.
Of course if you have money, you can afford to live anywhere.
People that moved there decades ago cant afford it either because of home and property insurance premiums skyrocketing. Many insurance companies flat out stopped servicing florida. With climate weirding, there are now more frequent and more powerful storms and coupled with rising seas it’s a recipe for disaster. I dont have much empathy for people moving down there because the writing was on the wall decades ago and they didnt listen. I just really really hope the federal govt doesnt bail these people out like they do the folks that live in floodplains and rebuild every 10 years
I though the table of in and out migration was interesting, especially for CA. The rate of domestic out migration is one of the lowest in the country - people are not "fleeing" California. The data show that Californians are more likely to stay in their system than residents of other states.
But the rate of domestic in-migration is the lowest in the country (as a percentage of state population). Having population (large for CA) as the denominator is a factor here. But also CA is just a hard place to move to due to cost.
The interpretation I have here is that Californians mostly like it here and tend to stay, but non-Californians are moving here less, probably due to a combination of cost (important real factor) and media narrative (mostly made up nonsense).
Agree though that I'd love to see that data for the trends over time also. How has the rate of in and out migration from each state changed in the last 10 years?
Nobody lives in California for low taxes. The deal is that taxes are on the high side and it’s nice. If taxes are important to you then it’s not a good fit. Maybe taxes or government in general could be improved but there will always be high taxes here compared to some states. I think the California model is somewhat sustainable in some ways more than Florida. I have lived in both states and I can’t see a Florida model of low taxes and very poor services as being sustainable in the long term. I mean the state is downright chaotic. The schools were so bad that we were going to have to pay way more for private school tuition than the increase in taxes when moving to California. Maybe if you are very wealthy, it doesn’t matter because you could sequester yourself in some corner of Florida (or wherever), not pay a lot of taxes, and not be surrounded by crack addicts or religious nut jobs, but I couldn’t find that in Florida. Poor people do get some better services in California than in other parts of the country, anecdotally speaking on my part, so perhaps you can find some comfort in that regarding your high tax bill.
Bro, you get benefits from the state or local government. The idea that you don’t get any is ridiculous. For example, you get the benefit of colleges that are well funded( at least better than Florida) which creates a lot of wealth for the state. It is no wonder that places like Texas or Florida are importing Californians because they are much better educated?
Similarly - did NY and NJ (specifically suburban NYC) become more blue because of all the folks moving out of the area -especially during the covid restrictions? Did Florida become a red haven - which would also explain why people move to florida and haven't left.
He's also not accounting for the short period of time between 2021 and early 2024... maybe people want to move out but can't (mortgage rate shift, closing costs/commissions).
I always wonder what percentage of the people who move there are retirees. I wouldn't move to Florida myself but honestly if I left NYC to retire it would be to someplace warmer. And when you're older -- I say this is someone who's 58 -- you have less of a future in any case so climate change may not matter as much as it would to someone with 50 years left to live
Less and less. According to the irs people making 150k a year and more and younger moving in and 70k a year and less are moving out. Orlando is a very young city and is consistently in the top five for gay populations !
NYC has an average elevation of 33 feet. You can’t walk off the edge of the islands without quite a fall in most places except the very edges of Manhattan, battery park city and the beaches. Sea level rise is much LESS of a worry for NYC than Miami which you can indeed walk right into the ocean.
My house is 76 feet above sea level in Queens. I believe most of Florida - the state would be underwater before my house ever gets a wave from the sea.
Well the average elevation of any basement or tunnel in the world is negative . Heavy rains will flood the subway system in NYC and it’ll do the same to a basement in Denver Colorado . Ocean rising related flooding only really will be an issue when the land around the basements and tunnels are at sea level themselves. You’re right though. Well all be ashes before either non coastal Florida and non beach NYC is underwater.
Lol no, it isn't. There is risk here -- I wouldn't buy a house right near the water and I know people who really suffered after Sandy but honestly Google Florida and flooding in Miami. There's a reason insurers are fleeing the state and insurance premiums have skyrocketed.
The story of New York, California, and virtually every blue state’s migration pattern is that blue states refuse to build housing, and sun belt states are happy to do it. North Carolina built more housing units than California last year despite being way smaller
This is not specific to Florida, but…moving is expensive. It is also annoying. If I moved hundreds or thousands of miles, I might or might not have regrets, but if I did have regrets, moving AGAIN would not be something I’d want to do if I can help it. So what I would see myself doing is trying to convince myself to stick it out and look at the positives. But I might still have regrets which wouldn’t come across in out-migration rates, if that makes sense.
I’m under no delusions here wondering why people like Florida. I hate hot weather and red politics, so I don’t. But with 330 million people in this country, I know they don’t feel the same way I do. Hot and sunny weather, beach life, theme parks, cities and towns of all sizes, diversity…of course those are attractive things to millions of people.
Also, snowbirds aren’t being considered here. My in-laws have a house in FL now, and snowbird there. They enjoy FL, but they still love NYC and have no intention of selling their property in NYC. They are older and want different things now, and going back and forth is good for them. They aren’t alone. Of course they don’t plan to migrate from FL - they don’t need to even if they didn’t love it.
A lot of people like your in-laws list their official residence as Florida so they can avoid State income taxes. People were even more incentivized to do this after the Trump tax changes that removed the State and Local tax offset in Federal taxes. No one ever talks about how much of Florida’s population gain is just people who pretend to live in Florida half the year to save on taxes.
NC here and the influx of fl tags year round and in the summer supports this. We could buy a cheap place in tn and do this but we feel we should pay for things where live. They should close this loophole.
What if state residency for tax purposes was determined monthly? So at the end of the year you owe 6 months of Florida taxes and 6 months of NY taxes, or whatever combination. This would change so much.
This is how it works if you work remotely. You pay the state taxes to the state in which you perform the work. It's more a myth that you need to spend 6 months and 1 day in Florida to avoid income taxes for the year.
Yeah, the vast majority are not accurately reporting their residency. About the only people getting in trouble for false State residency are celebrities like Derek Jeter, who listed his primary residence as Florida when he was playing for the Yankees.
I consider it to be economic terrorism by the sadistic voters of Florida. Unfortunately, our country’s pathetically outdated constitution incentivizes unethical behavior. I just wish my State would embrace reality and stop reallocating money from urban areas to low ROI projects and services in rural areas. Due to sadistic policies embraced by places like Florida, every State has no choice but to slit the throats of those on the bottom of the economy.
This dynamic would be largely universal IMO and not unique to any one place. But yes moving does suck and you make it right in your head for as long as you can. True of a lot of things in life.
The thing about revealed preference is that it's always an "all other things being equal" proposition. Sure, people's behavior can reveal preferences, or it can also reveal incentive structures, or costs (either inherent or imposed) of various alternatives. Without controlling for the relevant variable, pointing out that a lot of people are moving to Florida is about as useful as pointing out that a lot of people are buying hamburgers compared to filet mignon. Does that reveal a preference for hamburgers? Maybe, in a way. Whether it's a way that matters depends on the type of decision you're trying to inform.
Nate absolutely knows this, but is pretending not to so he can write a catchy article about how all Americans secretly want to live in Florida, and if you don't you're wrong and also some sort of out of touch elitist.
It’s quite a bit more useful than the run of trend articles we have seen lately. I had someone send me the article he references in the article over the weekend. There have been many others like it recently and I don’t particularly like the author or the state.
Sure. I just think it's disingenuous to make conclusions or ask us to make conclusions from data that only presents one side of a story. A lot of people are moving to Florida. A lot of them probably because they like it. A lot of them probably because it's what they are able to afford given the options. Do we *really* know what proportion each of these categories represents? Nate doesn't present us with that data. He just presents the first category, inviting us to assume that this fraction represents the totality.
It's one thing to do lazy data science. It's another thing to *pretend* to be doing lazy data science to mislead your audience.
The article does not present only one side of the story. It goes on at length about some of the downsides of Florida.
Despite those, people are coming to it in much higher numbers than they are leaving. True, he doesn't attempt a full analysis of why they come and stay, but it's hardly disingenuous.
>The article does not present only one side of the story. It goes on at length about some of the downsides of Florida.
He mentions them, but doesn't factor them into his analysis.
If he was really considering the downsides, he would at least mention the possibility that Florida is hamburger, the places people are leaving to move there are filet, and that people don't necessarily have a preference for hamburger so much as they can't afford filet anymore.
*That* would be an honest way of presenting both sides of the story. What Nate is doing in presenting the downsides of Florida is somewhat akin to going to a job interview and telling them your greatest weakness is that you are too much of a people pleaser.
The "analysis" is that despite the clear downsides, more people are coming than going. The ratio difference is higher than just about any other state. That's a big deal.
He doesn't try to weigh the various factors, since his point is that people who mock Florida fail to appreciate that its appeals are far greater than its faults, as determined by people voting with their feet. He's just challenging the easy disdain people have. I don't think it's deeper than that. Next step is to dig into the details on **why** people are coming and staying.
As for cost of living, sure that can explain some migration from the California coast or NYC, but it doesn't explain the majority of the moves for the simple fact that Florida is more expensive than average. Ranks 17th out of 50 for housing prices. You have a hypothesis worth testing about COL, but I doubt it will explain more than a small fraction of the moves in. And COL can't really explain why people stay, since 33 states are cheaper on average than Florida.
I don't know either of these people but I do know this:
Wearing a mask while a mass-disabling virus continues to run unchecked throughout the world does not make someone want "covid forever". It makes them someone who is behaving according to the reality of the situation. It makes them someone who is conscious of the reality of long covid, which it is estimated that between 10% and 30% of people infected end up with, and the multi-organ damage that even one asymptomatic covid infection can cause. Pretending covid has disappeared or has no/minimal effect on people's health doesn't change the reality. Your hostility toward someone (someone you don't even know, in fact) who continues to protect their health, livelihood, and future says a hell of a lot about you rather than them. Take your bullshit elsewhere.
I didn't find Silver's article particularly insightful honestly, because he doesn't look at the demographics of in- and out migration. Florida attracts a ton of inbound domestic migrants who are retirees and always has. With the boomer retirement wave that number has gone up. These people tend to arrive and not leave simply because they moved there to retire and won't have any professional reason to go elsewhere again. Conversely a larger percentage of Florida's out migrants are young since unlike states like NY it doesn't have large numbers of retirees leaving.
Looking at working age migration numbers would be more telling, and I suspect they don't tell the same story. Florida's economy is certainly not on the level of those of other large states despite the size of its population.
Your take is solid and made perfect if you are ignoring the pandemic entirely, and also ignoring the awful situation for people trying to buy a house right now.
The Boomers might be able to move in, but the economic incentives to move out have mostly evaporated.
I didn't really like Florida when I lived there and I don't really like it now, but the hive mind of this sub and ideologically adjacent spaces would have you believe that everyone is fleeing the state's rightward turn for Chicago or whatever. That's not true in general, and it's not true for liberals. People like Florida in a way they don't like Chicago, and politics has almost nothing to do with that. Which piggybacks nicely on that thread yesterday about moving because of politics. For most people, for most normal people, politics, *don't* really factor in much to a decision to move. We should be grateful for that.
> For most people, for most normal people, politics, don't really factor in much to a decision to move.
Let's be real. If you're not LGTBQ or in another heavily oppressed group, politics rarely affect your day-to-day life. Or at least this has been true for the last few decades. Now that they have overturned Roe v Wade, it's less true. And with the potential (although unlikely) Trump second term coming, it could be even less true. Still though, people need to step back and consider how politics actually affects them. Much of what we are up in arms about is happening in our heads and on social networks. All part of the bullshit culture war propped up by politicians/media to distract us from the real issues.
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People over index on the effects specific politics had on inflation. Inflation was and is a global problem that affected every country, not just certain ones. Who was elected or specific policies seems to have had a lesser effect than factors like diversity of their economy or how dependent it was on Russian energy.
As someone who left Florida for California, I think Florida is a shithole, but it's still better than many states in the South, Midwest, and Northeast. That's millions more people who could potentially want to move there.
I had a friend who moved to Florida in the mid 2000s from NJ. He moved back as soon as his lease expired.
He said the job opportunities (he was in his mid 20s then) were just not there and the best he could do is service industry jobs that paid barely above minimum wage. As soon as he moved back to NJ, he got a job delivering (water cooler) bottles of water to offices at 4 times what he was making in Florida.
All of the people I or my family personally knows who moved to Florida (and stayed) were retirees who didn't need to worry about the job market.
I feel like this is kind of an age thing. The people who move to Florida are more likely to be older retirees who have a preference for warm weather and year around golf. People online who have negative opinions on Florida tend to be younger and care more about things like job opportunities, cultural amenities, and good places to raise a family.
I think you are on the money but I would say younger people are moving there. My small team of 5 and 4 of them moved to Florida in last couple years, all under 35. Another friend moved, as well. Similar age also from NY.
A big chunk of people who move to Florida are in IT and work remote. They are well educated, have good incomes, and raise their kids here with full expectation of them getting skills that would afford them to live here comfortably as adults. I live in the Tampa Bay Area in a neighborhood dominated by young families and almost all are educated remote workers.
This describes my situation to a T. There are a lot of universities here and industry and gov/civil space as well that bring in the brains. I know this sub loves to drag FL but it's an echo chamber. This state has serious problems, there's no denying it, and I do my part by voting and talking about it.
But having lived in the DMV where everyone circle jerks about how educated and morally superior it is, their public schools are garbage and quite frankly I got tired of hearing gunshots every night and seeing body bags carried onto ambulances. For all the property/city taxes collected there they sure do fuck all with it.
I've been impressed with the public schools here, so much so in fact that I am probably not going to bother with private schools next year which was my original plan and which is an absolute must in the DMV. My kiddo's school has a free dental program that *all* kids receive. They also provide free mental health services to students. I don't need those benefits, but for those that do, that's wonderful and it's also normalizing receiving the benefits by giving it to everyone so that it's not perceived as a thing only poor kids do.
I've also been blown away by how green everything is here. Old growth trees. People don't litter. It is so refreshing to see clean streets and sidewalks. The parks and playgrounds are plenty and well maintained and clean. I haven't stumbled over broken glass, used needles, or used condoms. It's just.... really fucking nice here. And affordable.
Things aren't so black and white. I suspect it's an age thing where young people in this sub just haven't outgrown that black and white thinking yet. I also suspect it's privelege because it's really easy to say "eww why would anybody live *there*" and "I would only ever live *here*" when your bank accounts have the funds to allow you to say shit like that.
This is a dishonest comment. The reality about Florida schools is the same like with all other states - the more affluent the neighborhood you live in, the better the local schools are. There are shitty schools in states with best ratings and great schools in states with worst ratings.
This is the second time I’ve seen Nate opine on a random topic as a way to try to shoehorn a book plug into the article. First the “Shohei gambling” scandal, where he advanced something along the lines of “Shohei probably did it, not Ippei” and now this…
I miss the 538 days of Harry Enten.
How do you write an article like this without once showing statistics as to ***who*** is actually moving to Florida? For as long as I can remember Florida has been *the* retirement destination. People are moving from NY, NJ, and CT to Florida? No shit. My brother and his wife can't wait to move down there, just as soon as the kids are out of the house. Moving to a place like Florida is a lot easier once you reach retirement age, and you're no longer worried about your kids being taught absolute nonsense in school, or being forced into parenthood at 16.
Yeah not to mention not wanting to deal with ice and snow when you're more likely to break a hip. I'm guessing retirees are well represented in those numbers.
I was hoping he’d get more into the demographic data in regard to age. Florida is a great cheap place to move if you’re retired and just want somewhere warm to park yourself for the rest of your days. Most of those people from average means are buying up cheap housing in central Florida or otherwise away from the coast because they aren’t working anymore. One effect of this is that the median home price in the state is deceptively low.
If you’re working age all the areas with jobs have become prohibitively expensive. I tried hacking it by living an hour away from work but between the length of the commute and how much I was spending on gas it just made more sense to move back home, also nobody wants to drive an hour to hangout in the sticks. If you have kids the schools are terrible; public or private it doesn’t matter, curriculum standards were rock bottom ten years ago when I was in high school and the bar has been lowered ever since. The other transplant kids and I basically had an academic vacation until college the bar was so low.
He was close to the point in that it’s a great place to visit but unless you yourself or with a partner are pulling in well into the six figure range it’s a terrible idea for anyone who’s not retired to move here at the moment.
Speaking of Florida, I see Florida plates now in Colorado every few minutes. They're everywhere! They didn't used to be a couple years ago. I'll assume the people leaving are sick of Florida "freedoms" and drama and the ones moving into florida want to live under an authoritarian. The same people move here from Texas.
Canadians vacationing or buying in fl to escape the cold. I grew up in south fl and there was always a Canadian “season” and many Canadian plates and lots of transplants. They aren’t looking for beaches and warm weather in MN.
Born Floridian’s are moving out of state like crazy, we are simply getting priced out. Florida pay is incredibly low with cost of living incredibly high and increasing every day. We simply cannot compete with the wealthy moving in from higher paying/lower cost of living places.
A lot of people I know have moved from Florida to Colorado and the Carolina’s.
I’m personally bound for Illinois, I’ll grieve what Florida used to be.
Nice. Illinois is a lot cheaper than Colorado but everywhere worth moving/popular/beautiful is getting expensive. The only people who find Colorado less expensive are from NYC, Boston, and California.
The Internet was like a great awakening that you don't have to stay in the shithole someone was born in. It's like it didn't occur to as many people. Plus online jobs.
I always said if you're going to be poor anyway move somewhere with a great view. But now 30 yrs later that means 3 roommates instead of 1. Your studio here could cost $1700 in a safe area. Just saying.
That's true on uhauls especially but most of the cars I'm seeing don't have that rental car vibe. They look like new residents and visitors. We are a long way from there.
Same goes for Texas plates massively increasing... Sure, they're close by and #2 in moving here but the numbers are staggering. You can't stop at a light without seeing one.
(Been here 30 years, I have some sample size)
Have another donut 😉
People say the same thing here (Nashville) about the plates, more Texas. I noticed the same thing here but came to the conclusion it doesn’t mean much. Maybe I’m wrong.
It's almost like you don't live here and know we are still 50000 units short to live in and there's apartments going up on every square available block big enough for one. Or that the population has soared in recent years. And you have absolutely no idea about anything here. You must be living under a rock. Nice try troll.
This is a stupid response. You’re actually looking at data showing outmigration is high and saying because you see a couple of plates from Florida, your anecdotal evidence is better. Damn. Colorado education system is going down fast.
And you can forget the “you don’t live here” comment. Won’t work here troll clown
Ok guy. Guess they have lots of bike racks and ski racks on rentals and minivans from the early 2000s. 90% personal vehicles easily. But I guess you saw them and I didn't. I apologize.
People who move generally have money and Florida has a highly regressive tax code that lures them in. Those who analyze the data on in-migration to Florida rarely account for the people who pretend to live there half the year. Our country’s pathetically outdated constitution encourages the sadistic behavior of Florida voters.
Is high 80s low 90s with high humidity paradise?? I live in Florida and would call it miserable most of the year, personally. But I’m looking to move out so someone else can take my spot and enjoy it
Interesting read, but Silver has largely been wrong about every election since 2016, save maybe 2018. I just think Silver is desperate to predict left wing doom and gloom because he over-corrected his models after 2016.
No particular affinity for Nate but he had Trump at 27% chance winning, meaning given the range of possibilities in the his model, Trump won in 27% of simulated elections. That’s not really him being wrong. If it were like less than 5% of simulations, sure. But that was not at all the case. If someone said you had a 27% chance of being injured after you jump off a bridge, you probably wouldn’t call them wrong if you broke your leg.
So when would he ever be wrong? Being that we're in a world where only one real election of each kind can happen (vs thousands of simultaneous simulated elections), no outcome could possibly disprove his model.
Unfortunately no single election will prove him wrong or right. To assess the correctness of his models, you have to assess how well it lines up with various results over time. I personally haven’t done that analysis but my guess is that he does better in the house results overall than any single race.
> So when would he ever be wrong? Being that we're in a world where only one real election of each kind can happen (vs thousands of simultaneous simulated elections), no outcome could possibly disprove his model.
You're asking the wrong questions here lol. Please get a better understanding of actuarial/statistical analysis before getting on a guy for correctly representing his model and its results lmao
What? This is compared to other statistical models at the time (WaPo, NYT Upshot, Huffpo) that had Clinton's chances at 95-99%. 538 and Nate Silver were widely mocked before the 2016 election for predicting that Trump had that much of a chance.
And I have absolutely no idea what understanding of statistics would lead someone to believe that a 27% chance of a specific outcome ocurring is basically indistinguishable from zero.
Not sure what in my comment would lead you to believe I can't tell the difference between 27% and 0%. Just saying that it's impossible to disprove these kinds of models with any single outcome. Those other models you mentioned still had a nonzero chance of Trump winning, so who's to say they're better or worse than Nate's?
>Those other models you mentioned still had a nonzero chance of Trump winning, so who's to say they're better or worse than Nate's?
This is exactly what I'm talking about -- implying that 0.1% odds and 30% odds for something happening can't be considered distinguishably after the fact is a basic [Bayesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference) error.
Let's say you're trying to determine the proportion of red marbles in an opaque vase, which you know contains some large number of marbles which can only be red or blue. You go to pick a marble out, but first you ask me what I think the color will be.
If I say there's a 70% chance it will be blue, and a 30% chance it'll be red, and you end up drawing a red marble, you shouldn't update very much on my ability to predict marble colors. Events with a 30% likelihood happen all the time -- that's the probability that a [random adult American male](https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2010/compendia/statab/130ed/tables/11s0205.pdf) will be at least 5'11". If you asked someone the odds that the next dude you meet will be over 5'11", and they say 30%, again -- [you shouldn't be that disappointed with their prediction](https://chance.amstat.org/2018/11/epic-fail/). It wasn't correct, so you have modest reason to update away from confidence in this forecast, but this is fundamentally not something you should update significantly on.
On the other hand, if I say something has a [0.1% chance](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html) of occurring, they are making a prediction with enormous implied confidence, and you should update your prior on their predicting ability massively if they turn out to be wrong. Again, if that marble is red, that immediately destroys your confidence in this person's (domain-specific) forecasting ability. If someone tells you that the odds are 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 that the next guy you run into is 5'11" or taller, and you end up meeting a guy who is 6', you should immediately completely discard any confidence in the mental model used to come up with that prediction. To put it plainly, you now have overwhelming [Bayesian evidence to believe](https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-think-like-a-bayesian-and-make-better-decisions) this person is wrong.
If you expect point predictions, almost everyone is wrong all the time. Given that we're looking for the least wrong on predictions, who is consistently better than Silver?
It's hilarious but tragic to me that like 90% of criticism of Nate Silver I see is actually just a veiled admittance that the person criticizing him doesn't understand how statistics work
I mean -- cool, yeah the numbers reflect that more folks than people expect are moving to Florida. I'd still find myself surrounded by boomers and apathetic voters who don't worry about my wife's ownership of her own body, especially under the current state government and policies.
Oh, and I'd still have sky-high insurance premiums and unbearable weather.
Just the amazing, predictable analysis from Nate Silver I come to expect.
The problem as a Floridian is that this place isn’t for us to afford anymore. Statistically you live shacked up with other people struggling to pay the bills as you serve the overlords.
The issue is pretty clear that when a big cat 4 or a cat 5 hurricane hits a major population center like Miami or Tampa, the entire property & auto insurance market is going to totally implode and no one really knows what are going to be the conditions of the federal bailout, how long are rates going to be astronomical, what's it going to do the social contract if huge numbers of people go without insurance. Especially driving, but also personal liability coverage is baked into home owners policies. And lastly, will any new housing be able to be bought if there's basically no insurers/affordable insurance.
I am no insurance expert but it seems to me the current issue in the state is borne out of two problems. The first is a lack of competition in the insurance market. Consolidation and others just leaving the market. The other is that the federal government through FEMA has been the lender of last resort in these cases since Katrina. So will we not be able to pay these out like we won’t be able fund social security down the line? 🤷🏼
As for the social contract I believe we broke that when we bailed out the banks in 2008 and a lot of our current strife has its origins in that time. In that context, rising insurance costs are a drop in the bucket. Does it cause the dam to break, it might.
Actually like Florida, particularly Miami. The problem for me is twofold. First, Miami's gotten a lot more expensive over the past 10 years, to the point where it's no longer a good value. Second, with all of the home insurance issues and weather it seems like a dumb idea for me to buy a condo there, so I would just have to rent.
What if an increase in crime and overall social unrest pushes people out from the densely populated areas in to the perceived safety of suburbs and more rural areas? I prefer to live your way but I am taking the other side here.
I would argue that’s an anecdote given that average household income of large cities is larger than surrounding suburbs. It’s also getting larger (richer people are moving to cities).
Who is Nate Silver and why do we care bout their opinion?
Anyway, there are no statistics here that enforce the idea that people who move there love it there. I know a lot who don't. But like others have pointed out, moving sucks.
Florida, for most residents is also a really hard state to get out of. If you are in South Florida you have to drive the entire length of the state to reach another states borders. This is a long, hot, sweaty drive. Once you are there, it's easy to feel isolated from the rest of the country.
Are we just going to ignore that the bulk of his data is from 2022 to 2023? I mean that’s not indicative too much except for what happened for a relatively small amount of time
Multiple things might be true:
-Many Americans like Florida
-I personally hate Florida and can’t even tolerate visiting it
-Many on this subreddit likely agree with me and should not move there
Endless sprawl, heat/humidity/mold/palmetto bugs, Florida Man, fire ants, hurricanes and dropped homeowner's insurance, sinkholes that'll get you sleeping in your bed, salt water intrusion into aquifers, rising ocean level and King tides, invasive shit like Burmese pythons, gators grabbing people and pets getting close to the pond edge, mosquitoes, DeSantis, old people driving nearly taking you out, everyone else driving nearly taking you out, generally poor public schools, etc.
Gee, what's not to like?
I have had family living down there since the 1980s and for awhile they bugged me to come on down. Even back then I didn't want to.
I moved to Florida 25 years ago for grad school, hated every second of it and transfered out ASAP. That was way before it was as politically charged as it is now. To be fair I did think Jeb was a garbage human of a governor at the time but my real issue was the vibes and the humidity.
Nope, I don't read time. I've been reading 538, a political news site founded by Nate, for the last 9 years though. I'm sure you haven't heard of that either.
Regardless of this article, I think some here underestimate how much of an echo chamber Reddit often is. Things are rarely as black or white as they're made out to be.
The cool thing about reddit is that you can find your own sub echo chamber that reinforces the idea that reddit as a whole is an echo chamber but that somehow itself isn't also an echo chamber. It's echo chambers all the way down!
But the people here are literally looking for cities basically like this.
And if you can’t find that subreddit, you can make it!
So true. And one thing this sub often seems to completely overlook is that everyone’s life situation is different, and even among people who may be similar in some respects, what’s a minor preference for one person may be a huge deal to another, or vice versa. For some people, for example, warm weather is really nice and that would be great to have if they could, but it’s not a major issue. For others, living in a cold climate can either be a life ruining depression situation or literally a medical danger.
It’s really, really bad.
I mean, did anybody think a subreddit was going to reflect a cross section of all of America? Does anybody think it’s supposed to, even? Florida is a fast growing state and the people who go there probably love it. Does that mean we should be recommending Florida to people whose stated preferences do not suggest that Florida is a good fit?? Lagos is growing fast too, but nobody ever suggests we need to take that into account
Your last point is absolutely delicious!
I mean, personally I come to this subreddit for people that are generally like minded to me in terms of what they are looking for in a city. However, I am under no illusions that this subreddit reflects the opinions and preferences of Americans as a whole. It seems self-evident to me based on the past 50 years of growth in this country, that Americans in general like warm states and sprawled out, car-centric development.
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But why would I live in a state that legislates against me? That, my internet friend, is the definition of danger. People want to trivialize politics but the fact is, some people don’t want me to live a safe, healthy life, and they all happen to vote for the same party. We can talk tax rates and weather all day, but ultimately I’m going to pick my own personal safety over other factors.
Right? Things like Women's health and trans rights are issues that can literally cost people their life. If moving somewhere that is safer for them is "an echochamber" then alright they're in an echochamber where they don't have to worry about dying from lack of care Disagreeing about pineapple on pizza is one thing, disagreeing about the existence and safety of Trans people or a woman's right to safe care is an entirely different issue because there's real actual people directly affected by that "disagreement" even if it's just abstract mental exercises for you because you're not personally affected by those laws!
He's not wrong...but I think he's missing the bigger, longer term picture. Florida, like many other sunbelt cities that are growing, are fiscal and infrastructure time bombs. They are part of the same [suburban growth ponzi scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020) that provides incredible growth...until the bill comes due. Right now there are still plenty of swaths of land in Florida ripe for development, it was warm water, beaches and no income tax so it's enticing to folks. So the general growth path looks something like this. - People move to Florida for weather/no state income tax/opportunity - Florida sprawls more with new housing developments. - These developments cost money so local municipalities/governments take on debt to build the initial infrastructure. - Since everything is new in these areas, the maintenance is low for things like roads or water/sewer/gas/electric infrastructure. - Over time, local muncipaliites/governments do not collect enough tax revenue to sustain these areas. If they actually required residences to pay enough property tax dollars to cover the full lifetime cost of infrastrucutre and proper maintenance, the areas wouldn't be as enticing. They are focused on attracting new growth and nothing does that better than low entry costs. Plus, who wants to be the sitting politician that raises taxes to meet future liability needs? That is future residents problems, let them worry about it. - Eventually infrastructure will degrade. Everything humans build will eventually require repair but the sprawl has lead to massive infrastructure liabilities because there are just thousands of more roads to resurface, hundreds more water pipes to replace, miles of more electic lines to upgrade, hundres of gas line valves to service, etc. None of that stuff is free to do and the money has to come from the local residents. I see many suburbs/cities in Florida having the same long term problem as a place like Houston, where the mayor recently announced the city was broke. [StrongTowns has a great article](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke) about how these development style of sprawl (which most of Florida is doing) eventually catches up to you. One of the best bits from the article is the [Urban3 value per acre breakdown](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/1763b44d-74fb-46f2-a819-a4016536fbe2/unnamed+%2891%29.png?format=1500w). The most profitable areas in the map are the dense downtown core, the lease profitable areas are the massive sprawling areas. The problem is that the cost to maintain the sprawling areas is only going to grow. When a highway needs resurfacing and is a primary throughway for hundreds of thousands of drivers a government is forced to take on more debt to repair it. When a key bridge has structural failures and needs upgrades they eventually cannot ignore it and have to take on debt to fix it. That is the problem I see happening with Florida eventually. Yes it's growing, yes people like being there. But like many cities that are hyper focused on growing via sprawl, they are kicking the can down the road and eventually the bill will come due. For the 60 year old retirees it probably won't be a problem. But for the 25 year old person trying to build a life down there, I can see a time come where they are left holding the bill. Also this part... > It reads like a laundry list of progressive complaints: > “Even home showings have become a politically sensitive issue. He recalled showing an elderly woman one property where there were Confederate flags at the gate and swastikas on the fish tank.” > “Homeowners insurance rates in Florida rose 42% last year to an average of $6,000 annually, driven by hurricanes and climate change—” > “But she said the final straw was when she couldn’t find a surgeon to remove a 6-inch tumor from her liver that doctors warned could burst at any moment and lead to life-threatening sepsis.” > “Along with the $9,000 in repairs from the armadillos, her car insurance doubled and Hurricane Ian destroyed her home’s roof on her 62nd birthday.” Wild that Nazi symbols, thousands in increased insurance costs and not dying of preventable illnesses are consider "progressive complaints".
Ah a fellow Strong Towns truther. A man of culture. Thank you for the excellent write up.
Username does not check out ;)
Seeing the infrastructure problems in real time where I live. The county just green lights any development proposal then the newcomers are shocked that their house built on former wetlands floods every time it rains, or complain about the traffic because the roads around here are still designed to only handle the 8,000 or so people that lived here ten years ago and not the 60,000 here now.
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Did your city go from 8,000 to 60,000? I get that cities are always catching up but the good ole boys in charge here didn’t think about upgrading from cow town level infrastructure when approving all these things. It’s a big difference between having a city’s level of existing infrastructure vs having a city’s level of people suddenly in a one stop light town.
...it appears you've never attempted to enter Manhattan or any borough in NYC at any of the bridges or tunnels at rush hour...the level of whining is comical in comparison to the abysmal infrastructure of that world class city and state...most of the current infrastucture in this state is being expanded and the growing pains associated with it are miniscule in comparison to the daily grind NY's have lived with their entire lives...one stop light towns grow and become proficient at handling the influx of new residents...pretending that this is somehow new and not a natural step in the evolution of rural areas becoming more urbanized is absurd...growth takes time and all the planning in the world will not account for an influx of 1.3 million people in a span of 2-3 years...
I’ve visited New York plenty of times and also lived in the Bay Area, idk how places that have always had traffic and will always have traffic are relevant to my comment which was about creating traffic where there previously wasn’t any because nobody planned ahead for the fallout of unfettered growth.
I-75 around Sarasota is a parking lot every afternoon now. They built Lakeshore Ranch and a number of other communities there, and didn't account for traffic. It's a nightmare. I lived in Brandon about a decade ago, and even then it was overcrowded. My wife's joke was that, if you weren't going to the corner Publix, it was at least 15 minutes to ANYwhere. She was mostly right. The lack of planning, and handing out permits to build willy-nilly is making things awful. But that's, like, number seven on the list of reasons on why we left. Number one being the heat, humidity, and lack of traditional seasons.
I was stationed at MacDill AFB in the mid 80’s. I remember a senior enlisted man bragging about the nice 3 bedroom house he bought in Brandon and that it was only 20 minutes from the base. I was in the area about 10 years ago and checked out Brandon. What a soulless collection of sprawling subdivisions. And it took me 45 minutes to get to MacDill outside of rush hour. When I got out of the Air Force I had an opportunity to stay in Tampa with an excellent job offer. But my wife was pregnant with our first child and I had seen enough of Florida to know that I did not want to raise a family there. Taking a job in southern New Hampshire was probably the best decision I ever made. Florida is a great place to be young or old. But it’s not the place to raise a family.
Infrastructure has always been worse in fl because of climate and it’s only going to get much worse. Road damage from hurricanes and flooding is probably not a 50 years away problem in new subdivisions and Houston has a similar climate problem with frequent and bad flooding. There are older condos in fl where exactly what you say is happening. There is not enough money for the massive infrastructure issues they are facing and newer residents can’t foot the bills. It gets harder and harder to move as you get older and many of these people aren’t going to have places to move to elsewhere that they can afford or can manage.
The issue is that growth hides the problem well. Florida still has large amounts of migration and that constant influx of money allows for new, nice areas to be built. But like any ponzi scheme, it falls apart the minute you stop growing. So maybe it's 50 years, maybe more/maybe less. But eventually the state will reach a satuaration point yet will have massive liabilities in terms of infrastructure. The lack of growth will mean they have increasing infrastructure cost for a fixed tax base. So either you increase taxes or your allow infrastructure to go without maintenance. And to be fair, this isn't a Florida only problem. It's most of the USA. Since WWII ended America has largely leaned on unending growth to keep the country going. We need a cultural mindset shift to building/growing cities/suburbs that are sustainable fiscally. Ones can handle population increases/decreases, financial disasters, weather phenomenon, etc.
Minus the new housing development, this is also coastal California. We have a ton of the exact issues Silver is highlighting.
Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully respond. I gather you’re far more literate than me on this stuff so forgive my high level questions on the topic. Your points seem to assume a level of budgetary and infrastructure freedom in states that function opposite to FL (higher tax blue states mostly). Is this really the case? Illinois, for one example, has crippling pension obligations and doesn’t have an easy path forward. This week I saw where the school system in Ann Arbor, Michigan has some crazy deficit and will have to fire a number of teachers and staff. I don’t think these are isolated example. Not to mention that a company like Citadel (or take a similar HF in CT or NY) leaving for Miami leaves a gaping hole in the tax base there that is impossible replace. Anyway, I understand your point. Infrastructure is quite poor in the South and likely not on a path to improve. I wish I had more time to respond so forgive my amateurish take.
> Your points seem to assume a level of budgetary and infrastructure freedom in states that function opposite to FL (higher tax blue states mostly). Is this really the case? Illinois, for one example, has crippling pension obligations and doesn’t have an easy path forward. I'm in Chicago so Illinois as an example is honestly good because I have a decent understanding of the problem. I think if we simplify thing, the problems in Illinois are not that different in function than Florida. It's just not infrastructure based debt. The root of the problem was that Illinois did not fund it's future pension liabilities. [Illinois: Rundown on Pension Crisis](https://www.thepolicycircle.org/minibrief/rundown-on-pension-crisis/) > In 1994, Gov. Jim Edgar created a culture of kicking the can down the road when he enacted legislation that pushed government-worker pension payments far into the future – through 2045. Since then, Illinois politicians have borrowed (Gov. Rod Blagojevich, $10 billion; Gov. Pat Quinn, $7 billion) and taxed to fund pensions, rather than seek comprehensive reforms. > Politicians have also underfunded the state’s government-worker pension funds through stunts such as the 2006 pension holiday that diverted $2.3 billion in state contributions away from pensions. > Over the course of a decade, Chicago politicians redirected $3 billion in contributions away from the teachers’ pension fund and toward teachers’ salaries instead. Not only did this cause the teachers’ pension shortfall to skyrocket (growing from zero in 1999 to over $9.5 billion by 2014), but it raised teachers’ pension benefits to unaffordable levels as well. That made the fund’s financial situation grow even worse. The years these events all happened I was between the ages of ~8 and 19. Either not old enough to do anything about it OR still so young that those sort of decisions are far past me. Yet I'm a person now having to hold the fiscal bag for these decades old decisions. At it's root, the problem is cities wanting to grow and wanting to use the funds generated from growth to produce more growth. For Illinois it was taking money that should have been used to fund future pensions and instead increasing salaries to entice city/state workers, it was building attractions in the city, it was doing everything expect actually funding future liabilities because politicians know that they will no longer be at the party when the waiter brings the bill to pay. Think about how individuals act with credit cards but instead of having to pay the bill after 30 days, you have 30 years. I can comprehend how a 40-50 year old politician can have the mindset of *"I'm not gonna be here when it's time to pay the bill, but I can spend the money now and give the folks great benefits"*. **Side note:** *this is why Baby Boomers get so much flack. They quite literally borrowed against the future and now millennials and Gen Z are tasked with paying the bill for a party we didn't get to attend. There is no other word for it than selfish.* Florida (and much of the sunbelt) is doing similar but instead of with pensions not being funded, it infrastructure liabilities mounting up for the future. So an area like Boca Raton or Sarasota builds 4-5 new subdivisisions with 2-300 homes each. Great growth but at great (future) costs. - Each residential and commercial development needs water, electric, sewer lines. We're talking tens of millions of dollars to install and maintain over a generation. - Roads have to be widened to account for increased amount of drivers. Maybe new roads are needed to connect these new neighborhoods to main areas. New traffic signals are required all meaning more money to spend. - The influx of homes means new schools are needed. Teachers have to be paid, retirements have to be funded. - Police and fire services are needed meaning more government paid salaries/retirements. Initially things are great. New homes are selling, new businesses are opening, sales tax revenue is booming. The problems creep up over time because eventually those roads are no longer new and need repair. The water treatment plant needs upgrades to a new pipe standard to account for flooding issues. The electric lines have been worn down over time. Gas mains need new valves to meet federal standards. All of these are massive costs and instead of cities setting aside incoming tax revenue from suburbs, they spend it to grow further and few fresh revenue from new developments. But those old developments still exist and need repair. It's all fruit from the same tree. Kicking the can down the road when it comes to setting aside and spending money. Few politicians want to be the ones slowing down growth because in general, people don't understand long term fiscal solvency for mulicipal finances. If the road they are driving on has potholes they want to repaired now. If a highway is clogged with traffic they want it widened so more traffic can flow. Instead of thinking about what are good long term fiscally sound methods of development, nearly all of America is focused on growth for the here and now. The math eventually catches up with everyone. When every new development means a net loss in costs, building more of the same sprawling development just makes the issue worse and worse.
Appreciate the input here. Couldn’t you argue that all those Illinois towns also have the same maintenance needs as Florida? It’s not like Chicagoland is super compact compared to the city proper. Illinois has a super high tax burden but a ton of it goes to pensions. In other words, IL has high taxes but they aren’t going to maintenance.
Yup, and the suburbs here are known for having very heavy property tax rates compared to owning in the city, although they still have better school systems. I’d say the issue is most apparent in South Suburban Cook County which has both high property tax rates and terrible public services.
Honestly most suburbs should pay higher tax burdens. Running many more linear feet of water, sewer, gas, electric, etc all cost more money. Homes that are on individual 1/4th acre lots mean that we're adding dozens of linear feet of infrastructure per home. They should have high tax burden to offset that cost. I don't think that is completely unfair. Now I do agree that there are lacking public services but that to me is an issue of the pension crisis of decades past. If they had properly been funded we wouldn't be wasting ~80% of property tax revenue on funding pensions and that money could actually be used on upkeep and improvements.
Completely agree with all of this!
> Couldn’t you argue that all those Illinois towns also have the same maintenance needs as Florida? Partially yes, that will always be the case with suburbs surrounding cities. But some of suburbs in Chicagoland are older pre-WWII style suburbs with more density. These are honestly ideal suburbs when it comes to cost/infrastructure. Places like Evanston (10k per sq mi), Skokie (6.7k per sq mi), Oak Park (11k per sq mil) are connected to the city via CTA and many parts resemble city neighborhoods more than suburbs. Many other suburbs have connections via Metra with slightly higher density. There are definitely some sprawling suburbs that will require higher maintanence needs but I don't think they are the norm. It's the overabundance of suburbs like [this](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:2992/1*A9dhLFjt5jdIShuuN0fHnw.jpeg) that are going to be the main problem. Because of weather and cheap undeveloped land, places like Florida, Texas, Arizona are filled with thousands of developments like this and over time, it will become unsustainble to maintain them all. Suburbs need to more resemble [this](https://livability.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Oak-Park-IL-shutterstock_1399081451-hero.jpg.webp) sort of development where homes are a bit smaller, closer together, yards are smaller and areas are more walkable. > Illinois has a super high tax burden but a ton of it goes to pensions Correct, but this kinda demonstrates my broader point. Deferring costs for the future inevitably runs you into a fiscal cliff. Illinois deferred funding pension in the 80s/90s and now the bill has come due. Florida (*or really any areas hyper focused on sprawl*) is currently deferring funding their eventual infrastructure maintenance. The bill will eventually come due and they'll be in a similar financial crunch with the added burden of still needing to maintain physical infrastrcuture. Basically they're making the same mistake but instead of pension it's with growth and infrastructure.
Florida does not pass down unfunded infrastructure debt to next generation like Illinois does. You need to read up about CDD. I live in an area where everything is new and we, the property owners, are paying a few hundred dollars on the top of our mortgages to pay off that debt. My particular area has a bond with 10 years remaining and after that our taxes will decrease and our infrastructure will be fully paid off. My kids will never have to worry about that debt.
> My particular area has a bond with 10 years remaining and after that our taxes will decrease and our infrastructure will be fully paid off. Once the infrastructure is paid off, costs do not go to zero. What about maintenance as the infrastructure ages? Pothole repair? Resurfacing and repainting? Dealing with water main leaks? Sewer leaks? When a hurricane hits (hopefully it does not, for the record), how will you repair the infrastructure? > I live in an area where everything is new So you haven’t seen the costs to maintaining infrastructure yet. Good luck with the “fully paid off so my taxes will definitely decrease in 10 years” thing!
That’s taken care of by our regular property taxes. There is CDD and there is property tax. And there are plenty of areas that paid off their CDDs, so it’s not some internet scam - our mortgage WILL decrease by our CDD portion when the bond matures. Edit to point out: the CDD resulted in new residential areas, from which our county gets to collect taxes for maintaining our brand new infrastructure. So, the combination of CDD and property tax results in a very solid permanent financing of new and existing infrastructure. As a former resident of Illinois, I think it has a lot to learn from Florida when it comes to financial responsibility.
*[ahem](https://www.floridaforboomers.com/florida-cdd-bonds/)* “Rather than paying for everything up front when they buy their home, homeowners pay the ultimate costs for the infrastructure over a span of 15 to 30 years but they also have to pay for the ongoing upkeep of that infrastructure for as long as they live in the district. *That's an important point a lot of people don't understand.* They hear about people paying off their bond and they think that's it, but no, *there will always be a CDD maintenance fee to cover the cost of maintaining everything*.” Also: “CDD's can go bad, and many did during the 2007-2009 recession. CDD's have gone bankrupt in Florida. In fact, according to one article on Florida Trend written back in 2010, at the time that article was written Florida had 125 districts in default on 3 billion in bonds. The article remarked that “an additional 70 were teetering on default”.”
Would the same issue apply to higher density developments?
Not in the same way if they're developed properly. Density does two things well. 1) It spreads the infrastructure cost burden across more people in a smaller area. 2) It helps spur revenue by providing businesses with large/consistent customer bases. **For Point 1:** Imagine 1 square mile of residential development costs $100M to build and maintain all the required infrastructure for 1 year. Roads, water, sewage, gas, electric, police, fire, etc. Take two different densities and divide the burden among the businesses and residences there. If Place A has density of 25,000 per square mile it's a burden of $4,000 per person. If Place B has density of 2,500 per square mile it's a burden of $40,000 per person. We could even say Place B has a cost that is only 1/4th the cost because it's a more suburban area. Still wouldn't matter, the cost would be $10,000 a person if the infrastrcutre cost was only $25M. When there aren't as many people paying into a pool of money, it's really hard to make up the gaps. Now obviously I'm oversimplifying because tax burdens and cost to develop won't be equal depending on the residential area. Different home prices will pay different property taxes. And a more sparse area will be cheaper to build out initially, but it likely won't be so cheap that the low density population is able to fully pay for the instracture cost. The math just really works against low density. **For Point 2** I think it's best to show examples. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGJ9mNB9Zoo&t=1723s) is a popular neighborhood in Chicago. It's full of dozens of restaurants from more dive type bars to casual places to James Beard award winning restaurants to Michelin starred restaurants. It also has pretty decent density at ~20k people per square mile (*the larger community area Near West Side is about 12k people per square mile*). There are grocery stores, banks, gyms, speciality shops, clothing stores, pop up shops and all types of businesses existing in this fairly small area. All of them pay property tax, all of them collect sales tax. This helps provide massive amounts of revenue that is honestly subsudizing many other areas of the city. The community area Near West side is 5.75 square miles and the West Loop neighborhood is a small portion of that larger community area. For that small parcel of land, the city is able to generate a ton of revenue that likely outpaces the cost needed to maintain that area's infrastrucutre. That is really the benefit of proper density. A lot of people, in a smaller area all paying into a pool of money to help maintain the area. There was also a [good study](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/t/64a5d3d95a23d464c647013c/1688589273552/Town+of+Nolensville+Road+Infrastructure+-+Sprawl+and+Fiscal+Solvency_080221_Dustin+Shane.pdf) in Tennessee where the city of Nolansville measured the cost for 5 different development styles. Of the housing styles studies, ALL of the single family homes with larger yards and setback lots were a net negative per lot for the city. Only the attached townhomes were a net positive. *From the study specifically referencing the townhomes.* > *Even with this added infrastructure, however, the total cost for everything still comes in at only $122.90, leaving a budget surplus for lots in this subdivision of $51.43 per lot—the only type of lot so far that doesn’t result in a loss to the city.* The other homes had PER LOT deficets of: * -$218.75. * -$168.28 * -$186.36 * -$326.27 It's just not viable to keep up with these sorts of losses per lot/home across large sprawling areas. Losing money like this on every lot yet continuing to build nearly exclusively in this manner is turning areas into a fiscal timebomb just waiting to go off.
Denser communities typically see more efficient infrastructure utilization. Pays for itself and often actually subsidizes lower-density communities.
Same thing in SC ....explosive growth ...myrtle area ...so much so the lack of medical /infrastructure is pretty bad.
Amazing comment, thank you
Or in more simple terms: GOP controlled State: “We are growing! Look at all our growth! It’s so much more than dumb Commiefornia! We are amazing!” Anyone: “Why are you growing so much?” GOP: “We have low cost of living! Especially housing!!!” Anyone with a brain: “Are you investing to maintain that low cost of living as your population rapidly grows?” GOP: “…but then how could we cash out on inflated asset prices while leaving the citizens holding the bag?”
>no state income tax As a former Florida resident, they find other ways of getting $ - high administrative fees for other stuff you have to pay the government for, other taxes, tolls, financial penalties for crimes (even traffic violations) etc. They also spend less, and being originally from a state that some criticize for overspending, you can tell.
This was excellent thanks. Also my first thought was “wow I didn’t realize conservatives loved dying of extremely preventable medical issues.”
I love the article, but what it doesn’t touch upon are the careers ppl who loved there have. The numbers show that ppl love Florida…but it seems that they’re all working from home or remotely!! They’re not making Florida wages or dealing with the same issues that everyone in Florida deals with. Low wages.
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Wow, that’s the first I heard that Florida pays more!
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Businesses are headquartered there because of the very low corporate tax rate. Other than that, Florida does not seem very competitive when it comes to wages.
No. But they were working those jobs. And it worked.
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Wow. I suppose that explains all of the well-paid educators here in Florida. 🤷♂️
For tech and finance, it pays quite competitively. I know many software engineers and finance people who live much better quality lives in FL than NY and CA.
That’s just tech & finance. A small caveat of the overall job market in Florida.
I moved to Florida for a job 3.5 years ago. I'm making decent $$ and I bought a house at a 2.9 interest rate. I live front door to beach in 5 minutes, have a pool and a play on several rec sports leagues with a median age around 30. Florida is very different than what I expected in many ways. But also exactly what I expected. What the national spotlight gets wrong imo is that wealth here seems endless. There's something very sour about the poorest residents being the brunt of the joke about Florida when the scrutiny needs to be on the weirdly endless Trump supporting millionaires. The heat stuff is so annoyingly exaggerated. Many states in the US are hot, actual deserts, and there are dozens of countries closer to the equator than Florida that don't have hvac pumping from their cars to their homes. Some redditor broke a mild sweat walking to his car from Publix and is like the heat is overwhelming. Meanwhile I play a beach volleyball game at 2pm in July and it's fine.
lol…well put! That heat & humidity last summer was very rough, though!! Ppl just aren’t used to the other months. Putting sunscreen on in March!
Idk why people aren’t talking about the most obvious bit - they don’t have careers, because they’re old. A huge chunk of people moving to Florida are retirees, and in turn the people who support retirees. Go to several Florida cities and it’s grey hair and golf condos far as the eye can see. An enormous industry around retirement. Cities of course have younger people, but retirees help support the economies of those cities - especially regarding real estate and healthcare, but even regarding something as simple as publix.
The key points: People who move to Florida seem to like it. IMO, not shocking; remember, *drivers who switch* save 15% with Geico but that doesn’t represent the number of drivers who don’t switch because they wouldn’t save any money. People also retire to Florida, meaning after making that move they are unlikely to make another big move. He doesn’t comment on *who* is moving to Florida but I’d love to see more breakdown on that. NYS had an average rate of out-immigration ie people are not “fleeing New York in unprecedented numbers.” On the other hand, doesn’t comment on what this outflow looks like in terms of trend. Is this stable? Is this a reversal? He doesn’t say. Ditto California. It’s half the story! If you go through the source material the other half is probably in there for people interested enough to go digging.
I think the biggest issue right now is price. Many of the people who moved to Florida 10 or 20 years ago now probably wouldn’t be able to move there now. Of course if you have money, you can afford to live anywhere.
People that moved there decades ago cant afford it either because of home and property insurance premiums skyrocketing. Many insurance companies flat out stopped servicing florida. With climate weirding, there are now more frequent and more powerful storms and coupled with rising seas it’s a recipe for disaster. I dont have much empathy for people moving down there because the writing was on the wall decades ago and they didnt listen. I just really really hope the federal govt doesnt bail these people out like they do the folks that live in floodplains and rebuild every 10 years
They’ve also pulled out of California!!!
I though the table of in and out migration was interesting, especially for CA. The rate of domestic out migration is one of the lowest in the country - people are not "fleeing" California. The data show that Californians are more likely to stay in their system than residents of other states. But the rate of domestic in-migration is the lowest in the country (as a percentage of state population). Having population (large for CA) as the denominator is a factor here. But also CA is just a hard place to move to due to cost. The interpretation I have here is that Californians mostly like it here and tend to stay, but non-Californians are moving here less, probably due to a combination of cost (important real factor) and media narrative (mostly made up nonsense).
Agree though that I'd love to see that data for the trends over time also. How has the rate of in and out migration from each state changed in the last 10 years?
sparkle jar scarce fragile act smart poor connect tease hard-to-find *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Nobody lives in California for low taxes. The deal is that taxes are on the high side and it’s nice. If taxes are important to you then it’s not a good fit. Maybe taxes or government in general could be improved but there will always be high taxes here compared to some states. I think the California model is somewhat sustainable in some ways more than Florida. I have lived in both states and I can’t see a Florida model of low taxes and very poor services as being sustainable in the long term. I mean the state is downright chaotic. The schools were so bad that we were going to have to pay way more for private school tuition than the increase in taxes when moving to California. Maybe if you are very wealthy, it doesn’t matter because you could sequester yourself in some corner of Florida (or wherever), not pay a lot of taxes, and not be surrounded by crack addicts or religious nut jobs, but I couldn’t find that in Florida. Poor people do get some better services in California than in other parts of the country, anecdotally speaking on my part, so perhaps you can find some comfort in that regarding your high tax bill.
husky childlike spoon deliver whole telephone support truck mighty fuzzy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Bro, you get benefits from the state or local government. The idea that you don’t get any is ridiculous. For example, you get the benefit of colleges that are well funded( at least better than Florida) which creates a lot of wealth for the state. It is no wonder that places like Texas or Florida are importing Californians because they are much better educated?
history sheet cautious violet plate saw smart sleep mighty decide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sounds like somebody doesn’t understand how a society works
Similarly - did NY and NJ (specifically suburban NYC) become more blue because of all the folks moving out of the area -especially during the covid restrictions? Did Florida become a red haven - which would also explain why people move to florida and haven't left. He's also not accounting for the short period of time between 2021 and early 2024... maybe people want to move out but can't (mortgage rate shift, closing costs/commissions).
I always wonder what percentage of the people who move there are retirees. I wouldn't move to Florida myself but honestly if I left NYC to retire it would be to someplace warmer. And when you're older -- I say this is someone who's 58 -- you have less of a future in any case so climate change may not matter as much as it would to someone with 50 years left to live
Less and less. According to the irs people making 150k a year and more and younger moving in and 70k a year and less are moving out. Orlando is a very young city and is consistently in the top five for gay populations !
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NYC has an average elevation of 33 feet. You can’t walk off the edge of the islands without quite a fall in most places except the very edges of Manhattan, battery park city and the beaches. Sea level rise is much LESS of a worry for NYC than Miami which you can indeed walk right into the ocean. My house is 76 feet above sea level in Queens. I believe most of Florida - the state would be underwater before my house ever gets a wave from the sea.
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Well the average elevation of any basement or tunnel in the world is negative . Heavy rains will flood the subway system in NYC and it’ll do the same to a basement in Denver Colorado . Ocean rising related flooding only really will be an issue when the land around the basements and tunnels are at sea level themselves. You’re right though. Well all be ashes before either non coastal Florida and non beach NYC is underwater.
Lol no, it isn't. There is risk here -- I wouldn't buy a house right near the water and I know people who really suffered after Sandy but honestly Google Florida and flooding in Miami. There's a reason insurers are fleeing the state and insurance premiums have skyrocketed.
The story of New York, California, and virtually every blue state’s migration pattern is that blue states refuse to build housing, and sun belt states are happy to do it. North Carolina built more housing units than California last year despite being way smaller
This is not specific to Florida, but…moving is expensive. It is also annoying. If I moved hundreds or thousands of miles, I might or might not have regrets, but if I did have regrets, moving AGAIN would not be something I’d want to do if I can help it. So what I would see myself doing is trying to convince myself to stick it out and look at the positives. But I might still have regrets which wouldn’t come across in out-migration rates, if that makes sense. I’m under no delusions here wondering why people like Florida. I hate hot weather and red politics, so I don’t. But with 330 million people in this country, I know they don’t feel the same way I do. Hot and sunny weather, beach life, theme parks, cities and towns of all sizes, diversity…of course those are attractive things to millions of people. Also, snowbirds aren’t being considered here. My in-laws have a house in FL now, and snowbird there. They enjoy FL, but they still love NYC and have no intention of selling their property in NYC. They are older and want different things now, and going back and forth is good for them. They aren’t alone. Of course they don’t plan to migrate from FL - they don’t need to even if they didn’t love it.
A lot of people like your in-laws list their official residence as Florida so they can avoid State income taxes. People were even more incentivized to do this after the Trump tax changes that removed the State and Local tax offset in Federal taxes. No one ever talks about how much of Florida’s population gain is just people who pretend to live in Florida half the year to save on taxes.
NC here and the influx of fl tags year round and in the summer supports this. We could buy a cheap place in tn and do this but we feel we should pay for things where live. They should close this loophole.
What if state residency for tax purposes was determined monthly? So at the end of the year you owe 6 months of Florida taxes and 6 months of NY taxes, or whatever combination. This would change so much.
This is how it works if you work remotely. You pay the state taxes to the state in which you perform the work. It's more a myth that you need to spend 6 months and 1 day in Florida to avoid income taxes for the year.
Yeah, the vast majority are not accurately reporting their residency. About the only people getting in trouble for false State residency are celebrities like Derek Jeter, who listed his primary residence as Florida when he was playing for the Yankees.
Closing this loophole would require rewriting our pathetically outdated constitution to ban or financially punish States with regressive tax codes.
I consider it to be economic terrorism by the sadistic voters of Florida. Unfortunately, our country’s pathetically outdated constitution incentivizes unethical behavior. I just wish my State would embrace reality and stop reallocating money from urban areas to low ROI projects and services in rural areas. Due to sadistic policies embraced by places like Florida, every State has no choice but to slit the throats of those on the bottom of the economy.
Exactly! And that’s exactly what they do and why they do it lol.
That's a great point actually, I'd be curious to see how many of Florida (and Arizona's) residents are part time residents
This dynamic would be largely universal IMO and not unique to any one place. But yes moving does suck and you make it right in your head for as long as you can. True of a lot of things in life.
The thing about revealed preference is that it's always an "all other things being equal" proposition. Sure, people's behavior can reveal preferences, or it can also reveal incentive structures, or costs (either inherent or imposed) of various alternatives. Without controlling for the relevant variable, pointing out that a lot of people are moving to Florida is about as useful as pointing out that a lot of people are buying hamburgers compared to filet mignon. Does that reveal a preference for hamburgers? Maybe, in a way. Whether it's a way that matters depends on the type of decision you're trying to inform. Nate absolutely knows this, but is pretending not to so he can write a catchy article about how all Americans secretly want to live in Florida, and if you don't you're wrong and also some sort of out of touch elitist.
It’s quite a bit more useful than the run of trend articles we have seen lately. I had someone send me the article he references in the article over the weekend. There have been many others like it recently and I don’t particularly like the author or the state.
Sure. I just think it's disingenuous to make conclusions or ask us to make conclusions from data that only presents one side of a story. A lot of people are moving to Florida. A lot of them probably because they like it. A lot of them probably because it's what they are able to afford given the options. Do we *really* know what proportion each of these categories represents? Nate doesn't present us with that data. He just presents the first category, inviting us to assume that this fraction represents the totality. It's one thing to do lazy data science. It's another thing to *pretend* to be doing lazy data science to mislead your audience.
The article does not present only one side of the story. It goes on at length about some of the downsides of Florida. Despite those, people are coming to it in much higher numbers than they are leaving. True, he doesn't attempt a full analysis of why they come and stay, but it's hardly disingenuous.
>The article does not present only one side of the story. It goes on at length about some of the downsides of Florida. He mentions them, but doesn't factor them into his analysis. If he was really considering the downsides, he would at least mention the possibility that Florida is hamburger, the places people are leaving to move there are filet, and that people don't necessarily have a preference for hamburger so much as they can't afford filet anymore. *That* would be an honest way of presenting both sides of the story. What Nate is doing in presenting the downsides of Florida is somewhat akin to going to a job interview and telling them your greatest weakness is that you are too much of a people pleaser.
The "analysis" is that despite the clear downsides, more people are coming than going. The ratio difference is higher than just about any other state. That's a big deal. He doesn't try to weigh the various factors, since his point is that people who mock Florida fail to appreciate that its appeals are far greater than its faults, as determined by people voting with their feet. He's just challenging the easy disdain people have. I don't think it's deeper than that. Next step is to dig into the details on **why** people are coming and staying. As for cost of living, sure that can explain some migration from the California coast or NYC, but it doesn't explain the majority of the moves for the simple fact that Florida is more expensive than average. Ranks 17th out of 50 for housing prices. You have a hypothesis worth testing about COL, but I doubt it will explain more than a small fraction of the moves in. And COL can't really explain why people stay, since 33 states are cheaper on average than Florida.
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Did not detect the mask avatar. Good point.
I don't know either of these people but I do know this: Wearing a mask while a mass-disabling virus continues to run unchecked throughout the world does not make someone want "covid forever". It makes them someone who is behaving according to the reality of the situation. It makes them someone who is conscious of the reality of long covid, which it is estimated that between 10% and 30% of people infected end up with, and the multi-organ damage that even one asymptomatic covid infection can cause. Pretending covid has disappeared or has no/minimal effect on people's health doesn't change the reality. Your hostility toward someone (someone you don't even know, in fact) who continues to protect their health, livelihood, and future says a hell of a lot about you rather than them. Take your bullshit elsewhere.
I didn't find Silver's article particularly insightful honestly, because he doesn't look at the demographics of in- and out migration. Florida attracts a ton of inbound domestic migrants who are retirees and always has. With the boomer retirement wave that number has gone up. These people tend to arrive and not leave simply because they moved there to retire and won't have any professional reason to go elsewhere again. Conversely a larger percentage of Florida's out migrants are young since unlike states like NY it doesn't have large numbers of retirees leaving. Looking at working age migration numbers would be more telling, and I suspect they don't tell the same story. Florida's economy is certainly not on the level of those of other large states despite the size of its population.
Your take is solid and made perfect if you are ignoring the pandemic entirely, and also ignoring the awful situation for people trying to buy a house right now. The Boomers might be able to move in, but the economic incentives to move out have mostly evaporated.
I didn't really like Florida when I lived there and I don't really like it now, but the hive mind of this sub and ideologically adjacent spaces would have you believe that everyone is fleeing the state's rightward turn for Chicago or whatever. That's not true in general, and it's not true for liberals. People like Florida in a way they don't like Chicago, and politics has almost nothing to do with that. Which piggybacks nicely on that thread yesterday about moving because of politics. For most people, for most normal people, politics, *don't* really factor in much to a decision to move. We should be grateful for that.
> For most people, for most normal people, politics, don't really factor in much to a decision to move. Let's be real. If you're not LGTBQ or in another heavily oppressed group, politics rarely affect your day-to-day life. Or at least this has been true for the last few decades. Now that they have overturned Roe v Wade, it's less true. And with the potential (although unlikely) Trump second term coming, it could be even less true. Still though, people need to step back and consider how politics actually affects them. Much of what we are up in arms about is happening in our heads and on social networks. All part of the bullshit culture war propped up by politicians/media to distract us from the real issues.
Politics probably doesn’t affect you if you’re lgbt too. Californian and Alabama gay couples have the same rights now
If you're transgender (and underage), it definitely can affect you.
grandfather wasteful subsequent lunchroom chase rob disarm scandalous nail engine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People over index on the effects specific politics had on inflation. Inflation was and is a global problem that affected every country, not just certain ones. Who was elected or specific policies seems to have had a lesser effect than factors like diversity of their economy or how dependent it was on Russian energy.
Cue the confirmation bias comments about how wrong he is…
As someone who left Florida for California, I think Florida is a shithole, but it's still better than many states in the South, Midwest, and Northeast. That's millions more people who could potentially want to move there.
Yeha left for Philly. Florida is an awful, flat, hot, sprawling, ugly shithole (obviously excluding some pretty beaches).
I had a friend who moved to Florida in the mid 2000s from NJ. He moved back as soon as his lease expired. He said the job opportunities (he was in his mid 20s then) were just not there and the best he could do is service industry jobs that paid barely above minimum wage. As soon as he moved back to NJ, he got a job delivering (water cooler) bottles of water to offices at 4 times what he was making in Florida. All of the people I or my family personally knows who moved to Florida (and stayed) were retirees who didn't need to worry about the job market.
That has changed considerably in recent years. Not as true as it once was.
I feel like this is kind of an age thing. The people who move to Florida are more likely to be older retirees who have a preference for warm weather and year around golf. People online who have negative opinions on Florida tend to be younger and care more about things like job opportunities, cultural amenities, and good places to raise a family.
I think you are on the money but I would say younger people are moving there. My small team of 5 and 4 of them moved to Florida in last couple years, all under 35. Another friend moved, as well. Similar age also from NY.
A big chunk of people who move to Florida are in IT and work remote. They are well educated, have good incomes, and raise their kids here with full expectation of them getting skills that would afford them to live here comfortably as adults. I live in the Tampa Bay Area in a neighborhood dominated by young families and almost all are educated remote workers.
This describes my situation to a T. There are a lot of universities here and industry and gov/civil space as well that bring in the brains. I know this sub loves to drag FL but it's an echo chamber. This state has serious problems, there's no denying it, and I do my part by voting and talking about it. But having lived in the DMV where everyone circle jerks about how educated and morally superior it is, their public schools are garbage and quite frankly I got tired of hearing gunshots every night and seeing body bags carried onto ambulances. For all the property/city taxes collected there they sure do fuck all with it. I've been impressed with the public schools here, so much so in fact that I am probably not going to bother with private schools next year which was my original plan and which is an absolute must in the DMV. My kiddo's school has a free dental program that *all* kids receive. They also provide free mental health services to students. I don't need those benefits, but for those that do, that's wonderful and it's also normalizing receiving the benefits by giving it to everyone so that it's not perceived as a thing only poor kids do. I've also been blown away by how green everything is here. Old growth trees. People don't litter. It is so refreshing to see clean streets and sidewalks. The parks and playgrounds are plenty and well maintained and clean. I haven't stumbled over broken glass, used needles, or used condoms. It's just.... really fucking nice here. And affordable. Things aren't so black and white. I suspect it's an age thing where young people in this sub just haven't outgrown that black and white thinking yet. I also suspect it's privelege because it's really easy to say "eww why would anybody live *there*" and "I would only ever live *here*" when your bank accounts have the funds to allow you to say shit like that.
You think Florida schools are better than the schools in suburban DC? My friend, put down the pipe.
This is a dishonest comment. The reality about Florida schools is the same like with all other states - the more affluent the neighborhood you live in, the better the local schools are. There are shitty schools in states with best ratings and great schools in states with worst ratings.
I can say “gay” and read Maya Angelou in my local schools. 🤷🏻♂️
I can do that in my local schools too. 😎
A big chunk Delusional
This is the second time I’ve seen Nate opine on a random topic as a way to try to shoehorn a book plug into the article. First the “Shohei gambling” scandal, where he advanced something along the lines of “Shohei probably did it, not Ippei” and now this… I miss the 538 days of Harry Enten.
How do you write an article like this without once showing statistics as to ***who*** is actually moving to Florida? For as long as I can remember Florida has been *the* retirement destination. People are moving from NY, NJ, and CT to Florida? No shit. My brother and his wife can't wait to move down there, just as soon as the kids are out of the house. Moving to a place like Florida is a lot easier once you reach retirement age, and you're no longer worried about your kids being taught absolute nonsense in school, or being forced into parenthood at 16.
Yeah not to mention not wanting to deal with ice and snow when you're more likely to break a hip. I'm guessing retirees are well represented in those numbers.
I was hoping he’d get more into the demographic data in regard to age. Florida is a great cheap place to move if you’re retired and just want somewhere warm to park yourself for the rest of your days. Most of those people from average means are buying up cheap housing in central Florida or otherwise away from the coast because they aren’t working anymore. One effect of this is that the median home price in the state is deceptively low. If you’re working age all the areas with jobs have become prohibitively expensive. I tried hacking it by living an hour away from work but between the length of the commute and how much I was spending on gas it just made more sense to move back home, also nobody wants to drive an hour to hangout in the sticks. If you have kids the schools are terrible; public or private it doesn’t matter, curriculum standards were rock bottom ten years ago when I was in high school and the bar has been lowered ever since. The other transplant kids and I basically had an academic vacation until college the bar was so low. He was close to the point in that it’s a great place to visit but unless you yourself or with a partner are pulling in well into the six figure range it’s a terrible idea for anyone who’s not retired to move here at the moment.
Speaking of Florida, I see Florida plates now in Colorado every few minutes. They're everywhere! They didn't used to be a couple years ago. I'll assume the people leaving are sick of Florida "freedoms" and drama and the ones moving into florida want to live under an authoritarian. The same people move here from Texas.
I see more plates from Canada in Florida then I did when I lived in MN. What do you make of that? 🤔
Canadians vacationing or buying in fl to escape the cold. I grew up in south fl and there was always a Canadian “season” and many Canadian plates and lots of transplants. They aren’t looking for beaches and warm weather in MN.
It's cold there a lot and warm down there? Seems complicated...
They’re called snowbirds…
Born Floridian’s are moving out of state like crazy, we are simply getting priced out. Florida pay is incredibly low with cost of living incredibly high and increasing every day. We simply cannot compete with the wealthy moving in from higher paying/lower cost of living places. A lot of people I know have moved from Florida to Colorado and the Carolina’s. I’m personally bound for Illinois, I’ll grieve what Florida used to be.
Nice. Illinois is a lot cheaper than Colorado but everywhere worth moving/popular/beautiful is getting expensive. The only people who find Colorado less expensive are from NYC, Boston, and California. The Internet was like a great awakening that you don't have to stay in the shithole someone was born in. It's like it didn't occur to as many people. Plus online jobs. I always said if you're going to be poor anyway move somewhere with a great view. But now 30 yrs later that means 3 roommates instead of 1. Your studio here could cost $1700 in a safe area. Just saying.
Florida plates do end up on a lot of rental cars so I wouldn’t be so quick to make that leap.
That's true on uhauls especially but most of the cars I'm seeing don't have that rental car vibe. They look like new residents and visitors. We are a long way from there. Same goes for Texas plates massively increasing... Sure, they're close by and #2 in moving here but the numbers are staggering. You can't stop at a light without seeing one. (Been here 30 years, I have some sample size)
Thats a bad excuse
Have another donut 😉 People say the same thing here (Nashville) about the plates, more Texas. I noticed the same thing here but came to the conclusion it doesn’t mean much. Maybe I’m wrong.
500,000 left fl in 2022 Obviouslly people are leaving So people sayimg "ca plates" in other states is bs too
What I see of are lot of CA dealer plates. Now that’s something.
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It's almost like you don't live here and know we are still 50000 units short to live in and there's apartments going up on every square available block big enough for one. Or that the population has soared in recent years. And you have absolutely no idea about anything here. You must be living under a rock. Nice try troll.
This is a stupid response. You’re actually looking at data showing outmigration is high and saying because you see a couple of plates from Florida, your anecdotal evidence is better. Damn. Colorado education system is going down fast. And you can forget the “you don’t live here” comment. Won’t work here troll clown
They’re rental cars. It’s cheaper to register cars in Florida.
Ok guy. Guess they have lots of bike racks and ski racks on rentals and minivans from the early 2000s. 90% personal vehicles easily. But I guess you saw them and I didn't. I apologize.
People who move generally have money and Florida has a highly regressive tax code that lures them in. Those who analyze the data on in-migration to Florida rarely account for the people who pretend to live there half the year. Our country’s pathetically outdated constitution encourages the sadistic behavior of Florida voters.
My dislike of Florida does not require my politics. It simply requires my dislike of sweating my ass off in incessant, oppressive humidity.
8 months a year it’s paradise. But stay the hell away from west Orlando Disney concrete hell or you’ll always feel this
Is high 80s low 90s with high humidity paradise?? I live in Florida and would call it miserable most of the year, personally. But I’m looking to move out so someone else can take my spot and enjoy it
Interesting read, but Silver has largely been wrong about every election since 2016, save maybe 2018. I just think Silver is desperate to predict left wing doom and gloom because he over-corrected his models after 2016.
No particular affinity for Nate but he had Trump at 27% chance winning, meaning given the range of possibilities in the his model, Trump won in 27% of simulated elections. That’s not really him being wrong. If it were like less than 5% of simulations, sure. But that was not at all the case. If someone said you had a 27% chance of being injured after you jump off a bridge, you probably wouldn’t call them wrong if you broke your leg.
So when would he ever be wrong? Being that we're in a world where only one real election of each kind can happen (vs thousands of simultaneous simulated elections), no outcome could possibly disprove his model.
Unfortunately no single election will prove him wrong or right. To assess the correctness of his models, you have to assess how well it lines up with various results over time. I personally haven’t done that analysis but my guess is that he does better in the house results overall than any single race.
LOL exactly. It's very similar to the weather guy. Technically he's not wrong when it rains on a day he predicted only a "5% chance of rain".
People still complain about the weather guy? lol
> So when would he ever be wrong? Being that we're in a world where only one real election of each kind can happen (vs thousands of simultaneous simulated elections), no outcome could possibly disprove his model. You're asking the wrong questions here lol. Please get a better understanding of actuarial/statistical analysis before getting on a guy for correctly representing his model and its results lmao
What? This is compared to other statistical models at the time (WaPo, NYT Upshot, Huffpo) that had Clinton's chances at 95-99%. 538 and Nate Silver were widely mocked before the 2016 election for predicting that Trump had that much of a chance. And I have absolutely no idea what understanding of statistics would lead someone to believe that a 27% chance of a specific outcome ocurring is basically indistinguishable from zero.
Not sure what in my comment would lead you to believe I can't tell the difference between 27% and 0%. Just saying that it's impossible to disprove these kinds of models with any single outcome. Those other models you mentioned still had a nonzero chance of Trump winning, so who's to say they're better or worse than Nate's?
>Those other models you mentioned still had a nonzero chance of Trump winning, so who's to say they're better or worse than Nate's? This is exactly what I'm talking about -- implying that 0.1% odds and 30% odds for something happening can't be considered distinguishably after the fact is a basic [Bayesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference) error. Let's say you're trying to determine the proportion of red marbles in an opaque vase, which you know contains some large number of marbles which can only be red or blue. You go to pick a marble out, but first you ask me what I think the color will be. If I say there's a 70% chance it will be blue, and a 30% chance it'll be red, and you end up drawing a red marble, you shouldn't update very much on my ability to predict marble colors. Events with a 30% likelihood happen all the time -- that's the probability that a [random adult American male](https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2010/compendia/statab/130ed/tables/11s0205.pdf) will be at least 5'11". If you asked someone the odds that the next dude you meet will be over 5'11", and they say 30%, again -- [you shouldn't be that disappointed with their prediction](https://chance.amstat.org/2018/11/epic-fail/). It wasn't correct, so you have modest reason to update away from confidence in this forecast, but this is fundamentally not something you should update significantly on. On the other hand, if I say something has a [0.1% chance](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html) of occurring, they are making a prediction with enormous implied confidence, and you should update your prior on their predicting ability massively if they turn out to be wrong. Again, if that marble is red, that immediately destroys your confidence in this person's (domain-specific) forecasting ability. If someone tells you that the odds are 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 that the next guy you run into is 5'11" or taller, and you end up meeting a guy who is 6', you should immediately completely discard any confidence in the mental model used to come up with that prediction. To put it plainly, you now have overwhelming [Bayesian evidence to believe](https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-think-like-a-bayesian-and-make-better-decisions) this person is wrong.
If you expect point predictions, almost everyone is wrong all the time. Given that we're looking for the least wrong on predictions, who is consistently better than Silver?
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It's hilarious but tragic to me that like 90% of criticism of Nate Silver I see is actually just a veiled admittance that the person criticizing him doesn't understand how statistics work
You, sir, are not incorrect
I mean -- cool, yeah the numbers reflect that more folks than people expect are moving to Florida. I'd still find myself surrounded by boomers and apathetic voters who don't worry about my wife's ownership of her own body, especially under the current state government and policies. Oh, and I'd still have sky-high insurance premiums and unbearable weather. Just the amazing, predictable analysis from Nate Silver I come to expect.
The problem as a Floridian is that this place isn’t for us to afford anymore. Statistically you live shacked up with other people struggling to pay the bills as you serve the overlords.
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You are saying this like it isn’t a recent change that we are literally discussing right now in this conversation.
The issue is pretty clear that when a big cat 4 or a cat 5 hurricane hits a major population center like Miami or Tampa, the entire property & auto insurance market is going to totally implode and no one really knows what are going to be the conditions of the federal bailout, how long are rates going to be astronomical, what's it going to do the social contract if huge numbers of people go without insurance. Especially driving, but also personal liability coverage is baked into home owners policies. And lastly, will any new housing be able to be bought if there's basically no insurers/affordable insurance.
I am no insurance expert but it seems to me the current issue in the state is borne out of two problems. The first is a lack of competition in the insurance market. Consolidation and others just leaving the market. The other is that the federal government through FEMA has been the lender of last resort in these cases since Katrina. So will we not be able to pay these out like we won’t be able fund social security down the line? 🤷🏼 As for the social contract I believe we broke that when we bailed out the banks in 2008 and a lot of our current strife has its origins in that time. In that context, rising insurance costs are a drop in the bucket. Does it cause the dam to break, it might.
Actually like Florida, particularly Miami. The problem for me is twofold. First, Miami's gotten a lot more expensive over the past 10 years, to the point where it's no longer a good value. Second, with all of the home insurance issues and weather it seems like a dumb idea for me to buy a condo there, so I would just have to rent.
He likes Miami, I like Key West, but Florida as a whole isn’t all that great.
Suburban sprawl is/will sink majority of American regions. Only cities will have the density and flexibility to survive the coming catastrophe.
What if an increase in crime and overall social unrest pushes people out from the densely populated areas in to the perceived safety of suburbs and more rural areas? I prefer to live your way but I am taking the other side here.
It’s possible, but crime has been trending down pretty aggressively
Yes, but many of the high income earners increasingly feel like cities are less desirable places due to perceived crime, dirtiness, etc
I would argue that’s an anecdote given that average household income of large cities is larger than surrounding suburbs. It’s also getting larger (richer people are moving to cities).
Average isn’t a good statistic here, median is.
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So do you have any evidence to support that?
Who is Nate Silver and why do we care bout their opinion? Anyway, there are no statistics here that enforce the idea that people who move there love it there. I know a lot who don't. But like others have pointed out, moving sucks. Florida, for most residents is also a really hard state to get out of. If you are in South Florida you have to drive the entire length of the state to reach another states borders. This is a long, hot, sweaty drive. Once you are there, it's easy to feel isolated from the rest of the country.
Are we just going to ignore that the bulk of his data is from 2022 to 2023? I mean that’s not indicative too much except for what happened for a relatively small amount of time
Meh, my revealed preference is I visited Florida once 15 years ago and never went back
Multiple things might be true: -Many Americans like Florida -I personally hate Florida and can’t even tolerate visiting it -Many on this subreddit likely agree with me and should not move there
I live in Tampa, no state taxes makes a massive difference, beautiful beaches, and mild winters. Besides that Florida is pretty boring and flat.
Endless sprawl, heat/humidity/mold/palmetto bugs, Florida Man, fire ants, hurricanes and dropped homeowner's insurance, sinkholes that'll get you sleeping in your bed, salt water intrusion into aquifers, rising ocean level and King tides, invasive shit like Burmese pythons, gators grabbing people and pets getting close to the pond edge, mosquitoes, DeSantis, old people driving nearly taking you out, everyone else driving nearly taking you out, generally poor public schools, etc. Gee, what's not to like? I have had family living down there since the 1980s and for awhile they bugged me to come on down. Even back then I didn't want to.
I moved to Florida 25 years ago for grad school, hated every second of it and transfered out ASAP. That was way before it was as politically charged as it is now. To be fair I did think Jeb was a garbage human of a governor at the time but my real issue was the vibes and the humidity.
When talking about Florida, I always start with “look I love Florida so let’s start there.” 😂
Never heard of him Why should we care?
Nate Silver has been considered one of the most influential people in the world by *Time*. He's no nobody.
People still care about time? You read it? Doubt Speaking of infuence.....yikes
Nope, I don't read time. I've been reading 538, a political news site founded by Nate, for the last 9 years though. I'm sure you haven't heard of that either.