SECURING FLORIDA’ S FUTURE
by Dr. Jerry D. Parrish
As the Chief Economist for the Florida Chamber Foundation, my job is to look two to thirty years toward the future and map out the challenges and opportunities facing Florida. Through the Florida Chamber Foundation’ s Six Pillar Framework, businesses can take an active part in measuring Florida’ s progress toward creating economic prosperity and high wage jobs, remaining globally competitive, and fueling vibrant and sustainable economies.
It’ s in the spirit of measuring our state’ s progress that the Chamber Foundation has dedicated the past two years to research known as Florida 2030. This project, led by Florida’ s business community, is a once-in-a-decade strategic plan for Florida that goes beyond our state’ s immediate needs and instead asks, what does Florida need to do between now and 2030 to remain competitive, to continue to grow and succeed, and to protect our state’ s unique quality of life?
In this process, the Florida Chamber Foundation has visited all 67 counties in Florida and has received input from more than 10,000 community, industry and business leaders. And from our research we can see two main things. First, most Floridians have a positive outlook on the future of our state. Second, the quality of life we have in Florida is a reason many people came here and is a definite competitive advantage that Florida enjoys over other states.
Preserving Florida’ s quality of life is not only important to the people that live here now – it will be an even more important part of securing Florida’ s future. The question then becomes- how can we be competitive and also pass on a state that can sustain itself to future generations? We should invest in our people. One way we can do this is to help ensure economic opportunity. This can be done by creating opportunities for better education and training and working to
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