Luring people with ideas

by | Jun 30, 2015 | Economy, Editor's Blog | 6 comments

CNBC’s rankings for best states for business are out and North Carolina dropped four places from fifth to ninth. A lot of organizations put out rankings and many are more subjective than objective, so take the actual ranking with a grain of salt. However, if they use the same criteria year after year, they can tell whether a state is doing better or worse than the previous year. If that’s true with these rankings, then North Carolina is certainly doing worse this year than last.

The CNBC rankings give Minnesota first place. I have a fondness for Minnesota since my wife’s family is there and we spend several weeks a year in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. I’ve also been impressed with their approach to government.

While North Carolina decided austerity was the way to deal with the recession, Minnesota tried spending. They raised taxes on the wealthy and started a bunch of infrastructure projects. Instead of relying on low-taxes, low-wages, and low-regulation, they focused on quality of life–and that’s in a state where winter lasts from October to May. 

As CNBC said, “Never since we began rating the states in 2007 has a high-tax, high-wage, union-friendly state made it to the top of our rankings. But Minnesota does so well in so many other areas—like education and quality of life—that its cost disadvantages fade away.” In other words, they invested and it paid off. They are creating jobs by making Minnesota a great place to live.

In North Carolina, we’ve taken the opposite approach. The GOP decided that poors have it too good and the rich are paying too much. They slashed taxes for the wealthy and corporations, severely cut public services including our schools, community colleges, and university system, gutted environmental regulations, and declared a Carolina Comeback!

It hasn’t worked. We’re recovering at a middling pace but the price of that recovery has been steep for everybody but the rich. CNBC says we’re dropping in our rankings. Our GDP is at the middle of the pack, not the top, and we’re trailing most of our Southern neighbors.

The North Carolina GOP believes that if we shrink the size of government and keep regulations, taxes, and wages low, business will want to move here. That might have been true in the past but the world and the economy has changed. Companies want an educated work force. They need a modern infrastructure that moves goods and people quickly and easily. And they want a high quality of life for their employees. Minnesota understands that. The free market ideologues running North Carolina don’t.

As one observer aptly wrote, “Yes, it’s more about a region’s quality of life, education and workforce. Those fundamentals tend to lure people with ideas. People with ideas tend to build a diversified, thriving economy.”

6 Comments

  1. Eilene

    *now what… oops.

  2. Eilene

    Randy, as someone who did indeed come here from someplace else, because of the environment and the schools, you are absolutely right. And we are now looking to move elsewhere. I’ve never seen a state do such a complete 180 in my life! My husband is an environmental specialist, and I am a teacher. I have never felt so unappreciated in my career as I do here with this general assembly. And as for environmental protections, they are basically gone. My husband worked for DENR for 7 years. When he started, his office had 13 employees. Now, there are 4 people in the same office, and they are strongly discouraged from writing notices of violation or assessing any fines on any contractors who are ignoring the lax environmental regulations that this general assembly have bothered to leave in place. It’s a travesty. And don’t even get me started on the dangers of fracking. Our only saving grace is that we don’t sit on much natural gas, so the damage will be limited to a relatively small area of NC…. but that won’t make the folks who live there feel any better. We did nothing to protect them. I am so sad…. I wanted to move here for years. We came here, enjoyed nature, and spent our tourism dollars year after year. And now, I just want out.

    And Dwight, you would be right, that we could vote the fools out, if it weren’t for the fabulously gerrymandered districts and voter suppression. So, no what?

  3. Dwight Willis

    GOP candidates for the NC General Assembly in 2010, 2012, and 2014 told the voters that their plan to reduce corporate taxes in NC would lure new business and industry to our state. Just the opposite has occurred. NC has dropped from 5th to 9th place for the best states for business. Their industrial recruitment program is in shambles and NC is no longer even being considered by most industries looking to expand their operations or relocate to NC. They’ve modeled their legislation after the ALEC model used in Kansas. Kansas is nearly bankrupt. Not such a great model. We can’t change what voters did in previous elections but we can change all of this in 2016.

  4. Randy Voller

    From what I understand, nearly half of the approximately ten million people who now reside in North Carolina came from elsewhere. The influx created prosperity for a large number of Tar Heels and was based principally on the promise of North Carolina and the notion that it was a relatively progressive and forward thinking state with strong fundamentals regarding education, the environment, its university system and overall quality of life. Our GOP leadership in Raleigh has decided to wager this accumulated good will that is hard to quantify but easy to understand intuitively against the “bounty” that fracking, off shore drilling, incessant social engineering, deregulation, ideologically based policy making, Reagan inspired tax cuts and meddling in local affairs will be. Their “parley” is a real long shot with very little payoff and potentially an oily residue affixed to Carolina’s good name.

  5. Russell Scott Day

    I ran a co-op art gallery for awhile. Any artist could show if they rented studio space. Good artists don’t want to show with bad artists. Big minds don’t want to live around little minds.

  6. Carol Kemmler

    That NC’s ranking dropped is not surprising. What is surprising is that it didn’t drop further. Thanks to our Gov. and GA, this state has been reduced to a laughing stock for the rest of the country. Our quality of life has been reduced and I’m afraid they won’t be satisfied until it’s totally decimated. No wonder businesses don’t want to come here.

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