After years working in emergency medicine, and nearly dying from a Covid-19 infection he contracted at work, [New York transplant Louis] Rotkowitz said he and his wife were looking for a more pleasant, affordable lifestyle and warmer weather when they decided to buy a house in the West Palm Beach area in 2022. He got a job there as a primary care physician and his wife took a teaching position.
But he said he quickly found the Florida he’d moved to wasn’t the one he’d experienced on regular visits there over the years. His commute to work often took more than an hour each way, he struggled to get basic services like a dishwasher repair, and the cost of his homeowners association fees doubled.
“I had a good salary, but we were barely making ends meet. We had zero quality of life,” said Rotkowitz.
Along with the rising costs, Rotkowitz said he generally felt unsafe in the state between the erratic traffic — which resulted in a number of his patients being injured by vehicles — and a state law passed in 2023 that allowed people to carry a concealed weapon without a license.
“Everyone is walking around with guns there,” he said. “I consider myself a conservative guy, but if you want to carry a gun you should be licensed, there should be some sort of process.”
— Shannon Pettypiece in They Came for Florida’s Sun and Sand. They Got Soaring Costs and a Culture War.
8 Responses
“Everyone is walking around with guns there,” he said. “I consider myself a conservative guy, but if you want to carry a gun you should be licensed, there should be some sort of process.”
Good, get out and stay out, we don’t want you here.
Florida is now the fastest growing state in the nation, and it needs to stop. Over Easter, I visited my sister in Orlando, and the traffic was ridiculous, even on Easter freaking Sunday. It took nearly 3 hours to drive 45 miles on the interstate…
A little disconcerting that an educated, professional man such as a doctor would make several poor and easily avoidable decisions all at once like this.
Everyone knows Florida drivers are India level bonkers. Everyone knows homeowners associations are vampires. Prices are rising everywhere and tradesmen, repairmen are tough to find everywhere.
The gun thing strikes me as an excuse to cover for his making a series of poor decisions.
Eh, not really that surprising.
Doctors are notorious for believing themselves to be very smart and an expert in all things just because they have an MD. Financial planners know this very well. And the Beechcraft Bonanza got a reputation as a “doctor-killer,” arguably not through any fault of the aircraft, but rather complacency and attitude on the part of certain classes of owner.
Thinking that his vacation experiences made him an expert in all things Florida is inline with expectations.
“Doctors are notorious for believing themselves to be very smart and an expert in all things just because they have an MD.”
There is something to that, it’s the reason high performance, fast, complex systems light planes kill a disproportionate higher number of MD’s.
They call ’em “Doctor killers”. Faster light planes are a substantially higher workload for the pilots, and the get ‘behind the airplane’, not able to react in time and crash them with fatal results…
It has less to do with his so called education and more to do with his indoctrination.
“Everyone is walking around with guns there,”
If “everyone” means everyone, how does he know that?
Seems the good doctor doesn’t understand the meaning of concealed.
The argument of “everyone will be carrying” pops up it seems every time a legislature considers a CC bill.
It’s as if they think the CC law means that every person has to carry.
CC laws only help the good citizens since criminals do as they please, law or now law.
From the article:
“selling her Florida home at a $40,000 loss”
Also from the article:
“Florida is now among the more expensive states to buy a home in, with prices up 60% since 2020”
You won’t find a house because everyone wants to move there, but you can’t sell your house to leave because no one wants to move there. It’s just bad. Trust us. You trust us, right? We don’t have an ax to grind. We’re trying to inform you. Also, Florida Republicans bad, even when you’re a “middle of the road” Republican, or a “conservative guy.” Totally not propaganda. Who still listens to this stuff while taking it seriously?
Frankly, if “blue staters” want to move out of “red” states to more ideologically-compatible environs . . . what’s the downside (for us, at least)?? Hell, move ’em all to KKKalifornia, let them complete the destruction of that once-great state, and rational people will be better off. Florida, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, et al. “need” blue-staters like they need higher taxes and more regulation.
Don’t go away mad, Leftist/fascists, just go away. Glenn Reynolds’ “Conservative Welcome Wagon” idea REALLY needs to be implemented, ASAP. Keep the Leftist idiots with their fellow travelers, and let them inflict their damage mostly on each other. They’ll be doing EVERYONE a favor!!