Music

Brian Doherty | From the January 2024 issue

Singer/songwriter/entrepreneur Jimmy Buffett, who died of complications of skin cancer at age 76 in September 2023, seemed like a representative Florida Man. He embraced a popular image of louche, loose, canvas-flapping, soused insouciance, like the state he helped make iconic. But he was always, perhaps deliberately, misunderstood, with a complicated world of artistic depth and business productivity occluded by a reputation for hedonistic goofiness.

Buffett's fortunes grew even faster than the state he exemplified. He made Forbes' billionaire list in 2023. Meanwhile, the state's gross domestic product (GDP) has grown about 40 percent in the past couple of decades, its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent is lower than the nation's as a whole, and droves of people have chosen the Florida Man life since 2020. Like Buffett's wealth, Florida's economy is diverse, not reducible to a cliché of tourism: Education and health services; professional and business services; and trade, transportation, and utilities services all employ more Floridians than do the leisure and hospitality industries. The state's nominal GDP has it richer than all but 15 nations on Earth.

Both singer and his adopted state (like........

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