Florida vs California
Florida vs California
I have detailed how Florida and other GOP states outperformed their Democratic counterparts. A good piece in Brownstone Institute detailed how Florida outperformed California in all aspects from education, economics, and overall health care during the Pandemic. Josh Stevenson observed that having a job not only impact a person economic outlook but also their health as he observed, “The cost of destroying livelihoods has impacts on health and life expectancy.. This was well-established in Public Health yet was constantly ignored by lockdowners. Knowing that the lockdowns completely failed to prevent or even reduce Covid spread and mortality, it was clear by mid-2020 that there could only be net harm by adding economic hardship onto the already existing burden of the virus itself.”
Galvin Newsome views himself as the best governor when it comes to leading California through the pandemic and defended the Fauci’s narrative but the reality, the economic outlook of his state declined and many of his state citizens now live in Texas and Florida. There is a wealth of data showing the complete failure of the lockdowns. Josh Stevenson reported in his research that while Florida increased their overall employment from January 2020 by 3.2 percent, California, remained 11.5 percent below their pre-pandemic levels. This is verified by other data as we found Florida along with GOP and southern states did a better job replacing their workforce from the lockdowns. (Substack Home – frontier of Freedom notes and research and Latest on why People are moving to GOP states, there are economic opportunities. (substack.com))
In a paper by Casey Mulligan, Phil Kerpen and Steven Moore reviewing the metrics dealing with Health care, economic, and education found Florida came in at 6th place compared to California ranking only 47. Regardless of what Metrics you use, Florida outperformed California and Florida also outperformed New York.
Florida has 13 percent more population, so New York spends 2.24 times higher on a per capita basis and as Francis Menton of Manhattan contrarian observed, “The theory here must be that the extra spending improves the health outcomes of New York’s poor and other low-income residents. How can we measure that? Healthcare outcomes are subjective and often not subject to definitive metrics. But one thing that can be measured and directly compared is life expectancy. Surely, for almost 4.5 times the per capita state Medicaid spending as Florida, and with almost 40% of the population participating in the Medicaid program, New Yorkers must have demonstrably longer life expectancy than Floridians…In January 2023 the online pharmacy Nice RX came out with a study of life expectancy by state, using CDC data for the year 2020. And the results are New York 77.7 years; Florida 77.5 years. It is an almost imperceptible difference. This is beyond embarrassing.”
He also compared education spending and results as New York state pays out nearly 14,000 dollars per student compared to $8543 per student in Florida. Menton observed that “The summary is that Florida students did substantially better in two categories, New York students better in one category, and the fourth category was essentially a tie. For this, does New York pay double and more what Florida pays? Again, it is shocking…And dare I mention that, with the far lower spending, Florida gets along just fine without any income tax at all? All I can say is, it is no wonder that Florida continues to grow its population rapidly, while New York shrinks.”
I live in Iowa, and I hear the ads, but Ron DeSantis is not talking about this impressive record. He is trying to run the right of Trump and not yet working to his strength, his stewardship of the economy during the Pandemic and getting children educated when the prevailing policy was to keep the school closed. He was an island of sanity and competence when others failed on both. The biggest weakness of Trump years was Trump’s handling of the pandemic as he allowed Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birks hijacked the management of the virus while undermining Trump administration with promoting the lockdown that ensured Trump political demise in the 2020 election. The one thing that Trump did right was to go the federalist approach and because of this, many of those Republican states who opened the economy earlier provided the brunt of the economic growth that occurred in the second half of the 2020.
From May 2020 to December 2020, 1.5 million jobs per month were returned to the economy and this represented more than half of the jobs lost in the pandemic. It took Biden administration about two years to capture the rest of the jobs. These Red States including Florida kept the economy afloat and led what economic recovery moving into 2021. This is the story that we do not hear how Florida and other states including Iowa led the economic recovery while many Democratic states like California and New York preferred to close their economy and allow their people suffer to defeat Trump. DeSantis showed both competence and the wiliness to challenge the political establishment when they were obviously wrong and kept the economy going. DeSantis was right, the Democrats, the Deep State and even Trump proven wrong. Iowa followed his lead and Iowa also outperformed many Democratic states. That is one story that needs to be told. Competence in crisis.
Additional references
Leaving blue paradise - by Tom Donelson/ F of F (substack.com)
Once Again, State Budget Time in New York And Florida — Manhattan Contrarian