State ranking report: Big business loves South Carolina

The steady stream of depressing news about teacher layoffs, furloughs, increasing class size, school budget cuts and other woes of public education exhausts me. So I resolved this morning to look for good news and I found some: According to the Christian Science Monitor, American corporate interests rank South Carolina among the ten best states in which to do business.

Apparently, the combination of cheap and compliant labor, restrictive workers compensation law, extra-low taxes and amazing tax incentives, anti-union support from state leaders, and other factors make us a mecca for corporate interests focused on making profit.

The Monitor says so:

Business is tough everywhere, but some states are doing a better job of encouraging business growth than others. That’s the contention of Ronald Pollina, author of “Selling Out a Superpower: Where the U.S. Economy Went Wrong and How We Can turn It Around” (Prometheus Books, 2010).
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Last year, Pollina released his top 10 best states for business list. That ranking was as follows:

1. Virginia
2. Utah
3. Wyoming
4. South Carolina
5. North Carolina
6. Nebraska
7. Kansas
8. South Dakota
9. Alabama
10. Missouri

The study ranked the states based on the same 31 factors controlled by state government, including taxes, human resources, education, right-to-work legislation, energy costs, infrastructure spending, workers compensation laws, economic incentive programs and state economic development efforts.

Yay! I'm excited to see South Carolina in ranking in the top ten states for something other than criminal domestic violence and murders of women by men.