>Miami is the closest large city in the US to the Carribean, The proximity of South Florida to the Caribbean islands may not be as significant as its proximity

>Miami is the closest large city in the US to the Carribean, The proximity of South Florida to the Caribbean islands may not be as significant as its proximity to the United States. Miami is just an overgrown resort to begin with where you're still basically supposed to already have money before you go there. There is also the expectation that you will graciously go back home once the money you brought with you has been expended. Woe be on the person who thinks they can just move there and make money working like any other US city. There are not that many legitimate sources of income. Traditionally, people don't ask what others do for a living, that would be considered rude and a major social faux pas. There has simply never been enough jobs for the majority of people who have always found themselves needing some kind of income, so an incredible variety of alternative approaches have been engaged to separate money from those who earned it elsewhere. And this has always been a big majority so the culture runs deep at all income levels. Agriculture, retirement, tourism and real estate were always the main things, and the retirement, real estate & tourism "industries" prospered from people who made money elsewhere, so the agriculture was the main local thing that actually created wealth. But the farmers and farming corporations can not create the amount of wealth equal to what crowds of incomers can bring with them, so development logically proceeds to an extent and gives rise to interesting real estate opportunities occasionally. Real money has been made subdividing the Everglades and there's plenty more of it out there. Now there are actually lots of heavy industries and loads of smaller industries that truly do some manufacturing or add some tangible value to raw inputs, but by "lots" that means a very small percentage of the local economy compared to other states. Even Tampa or Jacksonville are incredibly more normal than South Florida and always have been, but they are quite limited in industrial work and more of a resort environment compared to other southern or northern cities. Well anyone that can sell millions of dollars worth of networking gear could be financially successful without needing to do anything questionable at all, and personal greed in this one case may or may not have had the strongest influence. There could also be the aspect of a businessman in Rome doing as the Romans do.