Editorial: SC builds better planes and cars. Why don’t we build better kids?

The Post and Courier ^ | October 17, 2019 | Editorial staff

[2ndDivisionVet]

It’s hard to keep up with all the studies touting South Carolina as a great place to do business. The latest, from Area Development magazine, ranked South Carolina third-best overall in its 2019 Top States for Doing Business, behind only Georgia and Tennessee.

The magazine based its rankings on states’ objective and subjective scores on a dozen attributes. It found that South Carolina had the nation’s best business incentives and its second-best workforce development programs.

We finished third in shovel-ready sites, cooperative and responsive state government, favorable utility rates, speed of permitting and overall cost of doing business. We had the fourth most favorable regulatory environment and the fifth most competitive labor environment.

Pretty heady stuff.

But it raises the question: If we’re doing such a great job making ourselves a friendly place for businesses to locate and expand, why aren’t we better off?

Clearly, we are landing more than our share of big fish — with Boeing, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and practically every tire maker in the world, we’ve built aerospace and automotive industries pretty much from scratch in a generation. And smaller but still impressive businesses are announcing plans to open and expand here on a weekly basis. These are astonishing achievements.

[DeplorablePaul]

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