Note that this is Florida's official death rate which we know underestimates the real rate. The governor stepped in and made all numbers go through a special department which does things like throw out any deaths from non-residents (snowbirds and visitors).

Based on excess death counts, the real number for Florida maybe 25-100% higher. See:

https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-d...

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coron...

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.3061...

Florida is currently facing a $2-$3 billion tax shortfall (numbers vary depending on the time of projection [0]) and California is facing a budget surplus [1]. There are details around this like one-off capital gains and tax rates and budget cuts, but the overall story is that FL had a slightly higher death rate than CA in exchange for an overall economy that isn't doing so well. Some of this is due to the fact that FL's economy is tourism-driven and my personal response to that is: as a tourist I was very tempted to (safely) visit FL this winter, but the whole "our state doesn't believe in basic COVID restrictions" thing made that much too scary.

[0] https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facing-3-billion-shortfall-l...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-california-coronavir...

The rates seem to be indeed quite similar, but what are your sources for these numbers? A simple Google search [0, 1] yields

California: 57.501 deaths, 3.641.664 cases (= 1.58%)

[0] https://g.co/kgs/kooiXn

Florida: 32.712 deaths, 2.004.354 cases (= 1.63%)

[1] https://g.co/kgs/Mrh3NR

Total number of cases to total state population is just shy of 10% in both cases.

Interesting claims. How do you know FL economy and kids depression is doing so much better than CA?