Back in Cambridge now. It was warm and sunny in South Dakota (T-shirt in the sun) and even nicer down in Florida. Here in Massachusetts the sky and the leftover snow are the same grey color. Light from the sun is but feebly perceptible. Thoughts are turning back to Florida…
In most parts of the country the nicest houses and fanciest restaurants are filled with people who have jobs. The crummy houses and fast-food joints are filled with the unemployed. Florida is exactly the opposite. The nicer houses in Vero Beach, where I was taking flying lessons, cost $1-5 million (and there are endless quantities of such houses in gated communities strewn up and down the hurricane-lashed barrier island). Entrees at the Ocean Grill are $25ish. The hotels, restaurants, Walmarts, etc. in town don’t pay salaries anywhere near large enough to make these things affordable. If you see someone in a fancy house or a good restaurant chances are he or she is a stranger to employment.
Given this example one wonders why a young Floridian would bother to seek education and a job.
My First college roomate was from Florida and came from what I understood to be those large multimillion dollar houses.
He went to private school; he did lots of drugs; most of his “back at home” stories revolved around massive parties and rich kids.
As a result, my impression of growing up in Florida is something like the movie Clueless or the hit TV show The O.C.: school is not for an education but to merely facilitate the social structure involving drinking and drug use.
That’s funny. Tahoe, or really most resort towns, are the same way. Houses on the lake run $5 to $40 million. Hardly anybody actually lives in them. Even the middle class neighborhoods are mostly vacation rentals or are second homes to the leisure class. Most people in town make about $10/hour working various service jobs. So you end up with the ultra rich and the working poor. There are a few of us trying to make a go at in the middle class, but we are certainly the minority. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if the whole country was like this.
>>Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if the whole country was like this.
It will take some time for the polarization to reach its heights and become obvious everywhere, not only in the most seeked-after locations. But yes, this is the direction we are moving in as participants in a system based on greed and separation.
Cheers
— Andre
Philip:
Not that I miss the point of Vero as a metaphor for the Central-Americanization of the U.S., but wait a sec… Sure they are enjoying their leisure now, but was it always so for the fortunate ones who inhabit these seaside abodes? Are they really such strangers to toil? Are all the favored ones mere inheritors of family fortunes? Do you have numbers to prove your assertion?
As a resident of the barrier island in Vero Beach for half the year and the suburbs of Philly for half the year (three cheers for broadband/VPN, the technology that makes such a lifestyle possible), I can understand the root of your concern for Floridian youth. Quite a bit of the nation’s wealth is funneled into South Florida with Vero being a particularly well-endowed area. The lack of a manufacturing base here puts pressure on the middle class that more industrialized areas of the U.S. are only beginning to experience in the face of the Chinese juggernaut. But why should exposure to this opulence be a cause for despair and not a call to action? Couldn’t it be inspiration for the aspiring? Is their really no way for the natives to achieve wealth? I know a fair number of local businessmen who would disagree.
Or why wouldn’t it make you want to go to the best school in your chosen field, say an MIT, to achieve your dreams? Local scholarships are available. And maybe, through your hard work and connections you made at the elite school, you’d even get a chance to start a dot bomb company and make a pretty penny off it and join the semi-leisure class?
While I grew up outside Philly, I lived on the Treasure Coast in my early to mid-20s for five years in the 80’s and my exposure made me want to work to achieve what I saw around me. And after returning North, the local splendor ultimately made me want to come back, and several years ago I made some local real estate investments that have raised my status from working middle-middle class to working upper-middle class. And I get to enjoy the trickle down golden shower of the local wealthy infrastructure with taxes that are the less than most Northeastern suburbs. Did I mention that the residents of the barrier island foot about 75% of the county tax bill while receiving about 25% of the services?
You know, if I were a rabid right-wing ideologue, I might believe you were showing strange tendencies – given your own good fortune – towards mere class envy…
Today the weather in Cambridge is much improved.
Not a cloud in the sky, that I can see.
I hope Phil is outside enjoying it.
The largest problem for kids in South Florida is the absence examples of well paying jobs (the exception being the service industries of law, medicine, wealth management.}
Having lived for a time in a similar community on the opposite side of the state, Sarasota, I would say what you are seeing is no accident, and is more than a single phenomenon. Florida coastal properties have long been exclusive and expensive, and it is no surprise that the communities on the coast in Vero Beach pretty much reflect the market to which coastal Florida has appealed, affluent retirees. What you are also seeing is a confluence with another trend, not exclusive to retirement communities or Florida, the gated community. In Sarasota, and elsewhere along the Gulf coast, properties directly on water command a large premium, while properties off-water in non-gated communities often are much less valuable. As there is little elevation in the southern part of the state, homes off water seldom enjoy even a view of the water (unlike California, where with an elevated coastline a view of the ocean can be had miles inland). The gated community has simply allowed developers to create tracts with similarly constructed and landscaped homesites designed to maintain a similar, or predictably different price point, while maintaining appearance and activity restrictions that keep everyone’s home values up. A gated community with some water properties and restricted access allows the price of off-water homes to be inflated higher than they might otherwise be in an open and non-restricted neighborhood. Even non-waterfront gated developments seem to maintain home values higher than similar non-restricted developments, absent even golf courses and other leisure activity attractants some of these communities often have.
The “three pillars of life” in South Florida are air conditioning, irrigation and pesticide.