Note: to voters persuaded by Gov. Twitter's campaign pledge to create "700,000 jobs in seven years with seven steps". How is that going to happen? Cut taxes and regulations? In case you haven't heard, Florida is already the cheapest state in the nation for business. It is a point highlighted by BizCosts.com in a recent analysis of the states.
No other state has as many areas cited by the study as "cheap" to do business. The Orlando Sentinel dryly noted, "With the state facing record unemployment levels -- a 12 percent jobless rate, with 1.1 million people out of work -- state political leaders built campaigns around the need to bring more jobs to Florida. Central to that was the implication that the state had not done enough to accommodate business or, in some cases, fostered an adversarial relationship with the business community."
The implication is wrong. Note to Chamber of Commerce: your growth-at-any-cost policies are directly responsible for the depth of the Florida economic crisis. Your credibility rating is zero.
Consider Miami-Dade County. Here, elected county officials over decades took the natural attributes of place and allowed bulldozers, lobbyists, and land speculators to wring value out of Miami like water from a sponge. Since the housing crash, the politics of ignorance have worsened. Instead of taking a step back, public officials-- goaded by lobbyists for business-- have tightened the noose.
Is it really so mysterious why corporations prefer not to locate jobs here? Look at our sprawl, traffic nightmares, underfunded infrastructure. They pay dues to the US Chamber of Chamber because they are "pro-business", but they are not so pro-business to risk profits by relocating here. Voters: Miami-Dade screwed the pooch with your quality of life, allowing bad business practices and terrible zoning decisions to be exalted to the level of worship.
One St. Pete Times business columnist writes, "If we're already among the cheapest and business-friendliest places, how will Florida Gov. Rick Scott's mandate to try and make Florida cheaper (lower taxes) and even friendlier to business (less regulatory red tape) really be able to make a big difference?" It won't. To that I'd add: explain how the zeal by the legislature to eliminate environmental regulations or to make Florida's waters MORE polluted is going to help "jobs"?
Drive around Miami-Dade's outer ring suburbs and note the vacant homes signs. Ask yourselves, in the absence of consumer demand, how will politicians "create" jobs. For decades, US consumers were allowed -- by federal policies and laws-- to use debt and margin to borrow their way into unsustainable levels of prosperity. It wasn't just Republicans, of course, but it WAS Republicans from Florida (and Miami, especially) who fanned the flames of the "Ownership Society" now in grey cinders across the landscape. The land speculators still control legislatures. But that is all they control. Voters ought to understand that the homebuilding industry will not stand for anything in the next decade other than scavengers of the disastrous result they created by turning government to the purposes of re-zoning farmland and wetlands for sprawl. There are no conceivable conditions under which construction jobs return to Miami-Dade as a "pillar" of the jobs market. It ain't gonna happen and no amount of wishing it is so, will make those jobs materialize the way they do out of Governor Twitter's account. I loathe the idea that the Florida Department of Community Affairs is a "jobs killer". It is a crock. After sustaining years and years of repetitive assaults on its budget, Florida DCA was already hobbled long before Gov. Twitter took office. And the special interests know it. Wasn't it in 2003, that Jeb! Bush announced the neutron bomb effect of his policies in his inaugural address: to hollow out Tallahassee buildings filled with regulators and turn the reigns over to private enterprise? Today, the GOP insiders who have big plans for vacant land outside the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary know exactly why it is important to decapitate the state agency and environmental regulations: when that happens, they will be able to "flip" their stinking investments onto someone else's less stinking balance sheet.
Florida voters are politically bonded to the consequences of economic illiteracy for the foreseeable future. (And if the Democrats have any hope in 2012, it is finding a way to be honest with voters about what caused the housing market collapses.) The only way to keep up the pretenses is to gamble that voters can be dumbed down even further. Politicians can't "will" jobs to a state that is already one of the most accommodating to business in the nation. Under the spell of such illusions, it is no coincidence that bringing full scale gambling to Florida is high on the list of the family values, conservative GOP. They might as well be rolling the dice on their wish machines.
8 comments:
Rick Scott Antoinette - "Let them eat tax cuts!"
An economy based on building houses is not a primary economy, it is part of a support economy--to is just a smoke screen. We need real jobs that aren't construction jobs they are jobs that are either in manufacturing or services that add value that create value. We have cheap electricity in this state, that is our key competitive advantage.
Illegal immigrants are killing our service industry job markets in Florida. Look around at who is doing the lions share of laborious work in this state. I guarantee you will find that a large majority of those people are here illegally. These people will work for half the price and be extremely grateful for that oppurtunity. Business owners roll the dice every time they pick up one of these day laborers and come to work on your property. They hope the property owner does not know they could be sued by an illegal immigrant who gets hurt and is suddenly eligable for a windfall of cash at their expense. Our existing job market must be filled by people who are legitimate, legal residents first and only then can we look at expanding that base to the unemployed. Immigration reform needs to occur first before there is any hope in saving the service indusrty jobs of Florida and business owners need to pay hefty fines for hiring undocumented laborers.
...then, the employers of the illegal aliens must be fined heavily for hiring them. Don't guilt the illegal alien who is being exploited and just trying to make a living, but the real culprit is the employers.
It's not only the illegal immigrants. People are always more than happy to hire people without the proper licenses and insurances. We can no longer afford to compete in the bidding process because we pay our workers' taxes and workman's comp. So what happened when work slowed down? Our workman's comp got canceled because our account was no longer big enough!
You'll never see someone working on my property who is not licensed and insured. You might as well just give them your Gold American Express Card and tell them not to spend to much. As the old saying goes,"you get what you pay for".
Hey, 700K jobs in 7 years. That is a relatively simple goal. As of December, 2010 there were 1,108,308 unemployed citizens in Florida, which is 29,310 more since December, 2009 after a Trillion $ stimulus "unleashed" by Obama.
At the current rate, Scott only has to lower the unemployment rate by an average of 13.3% annually or lowering the employment rate to 7.6% by end of 2017 which is still way too high from the historical rate.
So,I do not think this is a fantasy and I believe Scott is sandbagging the number. They key is to get the national economy moving with the right policy.
Based on a Trillion $ stimulus we know more government does not work. (FL unemployment 29K more since stimulus) So, a natural alternative is to employ a philosophy of less government and regulators and see where the economy goes.
Other than more government intervention or a hands off approach, you got any better alternative?
I say we shorten the name to Governor Twit. and we follow him on the Twit Deck of a legislature.
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