Top Three Takeaways – March 8th, 2021
- Florida’s been far better off than we even knew. The best news is the kind that starts off good and gets better. That’s exactly what’s happened with Florida’s economy. Governor DeSantis caught my attention in last week’s State of the State address when he made a point of stating Florida’s unemployment rate, which had already been below the US average, was still overstated and would be revised down. I figured if he felt it deserved a mention in his address – it had to be a meaningful difference and it was... Florida’s unemployment rate ending 2020 turned out to be only 5.1% - a full percentage point below what we’d thought previously. The government estimates for December employment undercounted tens of thousands of jobs which had been added in Florida. Without totally geeking out with numbers galore illustrating how impressive Florida’s revised unemployment rate is, consider this...not only did Florida have an unemployment rate which was 1.6% lower than the US average entering the year, no other large state is even close. California’s unemployment rate stands at 9.3% and New York’s is at 8.7%. In fact, our unemployment rate is now only the highest it’s been since November of 2015. If you don’t remember what was happening in November of 2015 – that's the point. Florida’s economy was doing well back then. Florida’s economy is very much a good news story which just keeps getting better.
- Control what you can control. This week that means a few things. First, if you have local elections tomorrow – get informed and vote. Municipal elections have a notoriously low turnout history in South Florida. It’d be nice if we could change that and ensure the candidates which are most inclined to represent your interests, rather than donor interests, win. In case you missed my related story last week – in local elections in which turnout is lowest, the biggest winners are donors who contributed to the campaigns of local officials. In local elections where turnout is highest, residents' interests are best represented. That’s all that needs to be said about that but that’s far from all. Interest rates were already heading higher and that’s before the near $2 trillion COVID boondoggle passed the Senate on Saturday. I’ll not spend any additional time lamenting how the average household is now liable for an additional $14,000 in debt for all of this spending, or how Florida’s the most negatively impacted state by the legislation because Democrats doled out spending to states based on unemployment rate (which near-exclusively benefits blue states mismanaged and lockdown during the pandemic)...that’s now beyond our control. But what comes next is something you can and should control with your own finances. Debt. Interest rates are only likely to continue to meaningfully rise along with inflation due to this infusion of debt. If you have any variable rate debt – you should look at paying it off or locking it down to a fixed rate. If you’re thinking of taking out a new mortgage, you shouldn’t wait a day longer than you have to. When it comes to interest rates and debt – the records lows are in the rearview window and the trend is no longer your friend.
- Get the reference? On Friday I referenced Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. If you get the reference good. If you still don’t, you should. A lot’s been made of 1984 – and no doubt it applies to what we’re currently experiencing in our cancel-culture society. But every bit as relevant, and perhaps even more instructive, is Atlas Shrugged. If you don’t want to read the book, watch the movies. Like most movies they’re not as good as the book, but it’s still very much worthwhile. Just as the pandemic stopped our society in its tracks in ways, we’d not imagined would be possible previously, the Great Reset is a thing and the actors in corporate America and within our federal government aren’t movie actors. Take for granted your freedom, take for granted American exceptionalism, take for granted what we have going for us in South Florida, and it can all be taken away. Every world superpower has fallen. History says that’ll happen to the US too. Do you want that to happen on your watch and with your kids having to live with the consequences? If you don’t get the reference, you might live the reference.
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