Economic Development in South Carolina

[monsoon]

How about a realistic fix?

If you think what I proposed is un-realistic, then I don't have any answers. Why don't you explain why you think it is un-realistic and then we can go from there.

[CorgiMatt]

I saw on TV this week that the creation of knowledge will be a big industry in our future, not just using knowledge. In other words, research will be front and center.

[breed]

Two comments on this. First the United States, nor any other decent society is one based on pure capitalism and thank goodness it's not. You gave the example of BMW yet they would not be in SC without substantial taxpayer assistance. Taxing the people to create jobs is not capitalism. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it but it is an example that puts the "the USA has a capitalist economy" argument to rest. Teddy Roosevelt a 100 years ago spit out his sausages when he discovered during breakfast how the Chicago meat packing industry operated. Thankfully the capitalists were forced, by goverment, to get rid of the child labor, clean up their slaughter houses, and submit to governmental inspections of what they do. Business, in this country, exists with substantial governmental involvement raging from things like the above to special tax breaks, the legal idea of a "corporation", etc. It is not capitalism.

I never made the claim that we are a pure capitalist society. But the fundamentals of our society are.

^You fix it by putting up the same trade barriers to 3rd world nations that are not playing fair and against industrialized nations that protect their workers. It isn't that hard of a solution. Of course this would be a complete admission that globalization has been very bad for the individual. This is why we have had economic stimulus checks being written to people, interest rates lowered to 0, trillions given to banks, etc etc. Yet the economy continues to fall. It's simply because what I have said above is not being addressed. The fact that most of the nation has become Starbuck zombies over the last 25 years doesn't help either.

If it is not fixed, and we simply accept the fact that places like the ones I mention in SC should be allowed to fall because they were there first, then SC will end up becoming a much less relevant state than it already is, because nobody is going to stay in these places. Columbia, The Upstate, and Charleston don't operate in vacuums. If the rest of the state dies, they are not going to be that well off either.

The problem is that anytime you put up a barrier or wall of any sort, it

[monsoon]

You said that you are not talking about pure capitalism yet you continue to use the principles of pure capitalism to support your notions of how an economy should operate and to dispute anything else. I am not going to do a line by line rebuttal of what you posted because until we get beyond that point there really isn't any point. And its simply too easy.

On protectionism. Try to sell some Carolina rice in Japan. They are doing very well and the rice market in Japan is not going to collapse. In fact because it is behind protectionist barriers, they have some of the best tasting varied rice in the world.

If you think that globalism has made the world a more prosperous place, then I suggest you go look at the real numbers and also define prosperity. If anything the human condition is worse off, the world more polluted, there are more wars (spurred on by the capitalist need for resources), and there isn't enough food in the parts of the world where there isn't any money while the capitalism dictates huge waste of food in the USA where people are overweight and dying from excessive lifestyles. Capitalism was never about efficiency as this isn't efficient and it's the reason the basic theory about how it operates fails. It is about making money and I can tell you that when the focus becomes that, then humans suffer.

I stand by what I posted. We have had 25 years of the most relaxed rules on big business (more capitalist) that we have had since the 1920s and now we see the results of that. I keep getting back to my point. If globalism is so good, and the USA is the king of globalism, why is our economy falling faster than a rock in water. I let the results speak for themselves.

[krazeeboi]

OK, we've really strayed far off-topic here.

[breed]

Clearly, this isn't the place to debate the merits of communism and capitalism, but ultimately small towns have to work within capitalist constructs to foster economic development. And that means attracting jobs by being attractive... to both residents and businesses. In today's society, they need to make sure that they can provide a high quality of life.

[Spartan]

The biggest obstacle to retrofit these old, small towns into places with a high quality of life is money. These towns don't have much of it, and are hemmed in by SC's backwards annexation laws, so any new growth that their redevelopment encourages will likely happen outside of their incorporated limits. That's assuming, of course, that the people who live there want it to happen.

IMO, the first step towards helping small towns recover is using the example set by our sister state to the north. South Carolina has to change its anti-city attitude. For example- SC passed a law a year or so back that restricts the growth of a city or town's budget by 5% plus a factor for population growth. I'm not opposed to governmental spending restrictions, but in this case it was applied to cities but not the state. Its frustrating because in my experience the state is by far the worst when it comes to mishandling the budget.

Think about that at it applies to these small towns in the Pee Dee. How can they ever build a large capital infrastructure project if the Budget & Control Board won't let them increase their budget or take on enough debt for a few years to make it happen?

On top of that, how are cities supposed to grow when they can't annex? With the exception of forward thinking cities like Charleston, Mount Pleasant, Rock Hill, and possibly Greer, cities are not able to function well enough to serve their purpose of providing and maintaining public infrastructure and services.

[krazeeboi]

According to employment figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just one-fifth of the nation

[Spartan]

Here's the data for the entire state:

												 Civilian labor force						   Unemployed										  


			 State and area																 Number				Percent of labor force



											  October		   November		  October		   November	   October	 November 

										   2007	 2008	 2007	 2008p	2007	 2008	 2007	 2008p   2007  2008  2007 2008p

(Numbers in thousands)


South Carolina..........................  2,138.0  2,167.5  2,136.3  2,158.5	127.1	171.1	124.3	179.0   5.9   7.9   5.8   8.3

  Anderson..............................	 84.7	 85.8	 84.9	 85.4	  5.2	  6.7	  5.0	  6.9   6.1   7.8   5.9   8.1

  Charleston-N. Charleston..............	312.8	318.0	312.5	316.2	 15.0	 20.5	 14.4	 21.4   4.8   6.4   4.6   6.8

  Columbia..............................	370.4	373.4	370.6	373.9	 19.8	 25.5	 19.0	 26.2   5.3   6.8   5.1   7.0

  Florence..............................	 95.1	 97.4	 95.6	 98.3	  6.1	  8.3	  6.0	  8.7   6.4   8.5   6.3   8.8

  Greenville-Mauldin-Easley.............	315.2	321.7	315.3	321.0	 17.0	 21.8	 16.6	 23.0   5.4   6.8   5.2   7.2

  Myrtle Beach-North Myrtle Beach-Conway	130.8	132.2	128.9	129.8	  6.9	 11.1	  7.2	 12.4   5.3   8.4   5.6   9.5

  Spartanburg...........................	132.7	137.3	132.7	136.6	  8.2	 10.9	  7.8	 11.4   6.1   7.9   5.9   8.4

  Sumter................................	 45.1	 44.4	 45.0	 43.6	  3.4	  4.2	  3.4	  4.3   7.6   9.5   7.6   9.9

US Bureau of Labor & Statistics

[krazeeboi]

^Those look like unemployment figures. The figures I posted concerned the number of jobs metro areas lost between Nov. 2007-Nov. 2008.

[803metlife]

This is Not good!!!! On Yahoo's front page South Carolina, Rhode Island and Michigan are the worst states to look for a job!!!

[monsoon]

Keep in mind we are talking about people on or applying for unemployment benefits. These numbers do not count people who manage to get some work but can't get a full time job. Nor do they count people who have given up looking or people who no longer qualify for unemployment benefits. It will be interesting to see the numbers for 1Q09 because after Christmas the real layoffs have started to happen. Freightliner for example has pretty much laid off everyone in the Charlotte area and stopped production of trucks. They announced over 2,000 layoffs from that alone. This is going to have a lot of ramifications in upstate SC and western NC at the places that manufacture parts for them. I know people at 3 different auto parts manufacturing places that started laying off significant numbers of people over the last week and also went to 32 hour weeks for the rest.

[CorgiMatt]

A biotech company is relocating its headquarters from the Chicago area to South Carolina. It will invest $45 million and hire 70 people. This is a success story for SC Launch.

http://www.thestate.com/breakingbiz/story/658540.html

[Spartan]

Thats great news! Its good to see that they've selected a downtown location, even if only as a temporary location. I hope that they will end up in the Innovista Campus of USC.

[gman430]

Members of the Greenville County Council

[GvilleSC]

That's certainly great news to hear! How is the construction on their building coming along? It seemed to be moving briskly at last update...

I hope officials in the necessary positions will take the steps toward widening 385 before those extra 1,000 cars are using the road on a daily basis. The bottlenecking is already bad, not to mention the dangerous nature of the 85 & Woodruff Rd interchanges with their proximity to one another, traffic volumes, and visibility... But, that's for another thread, I guess.

It'll be great to see these jobs in 2009!

[CorgiMatt]

The S.C. Employment Security Commission's jobless rates for December just came out. The state's unemployment rate is now 9.5%. Charleston MSA - 7.4%, Columbia MSA - 7.6%, Greenville MSA 7.9%.

[gman430]

The S.C. Employment Security Commission's jobless rates for December just came out. The state's unemployment rate is now 9.5%. Charleston MSA - 7.4%, Columbia MSA - 7.6%, Greenville MSA 7.9%.

Disappointing but not suprising news. Those three metro areas look like gold compared to Allendale County who's unemployment rate is now 19.7 percent. A lot of times it's better to go off of actual numbers rather than percentages due to population differences:

Charleston MSA unemployment: 23,576

Columbia MSA unemployment: 28,462

Greenville MSA unemployment: 25,288

Source: http://media.charleston.net/2009/pdf/ESC_December_2008.pdf

Edited January 27, 2009 by citylife

[CorgiMatt]

I'll bet the Raleigh MSA has more unemployed than any of our big three, but percentage-wise they are performing a lot better. But then again if you go off actual numbers and you're a positive person, you can look at it conversely and consider the number of people in each MSA who are employed.

Edited January 27, 2009 by CorgiMatt

[krazeeboi]

Disappointing but not suprising news. Those three metro areas look like gold compared to Allendale County who's unemployment rate is now 19.7 percent. A lot of times it's better to go off of actual numbers rather than percentages due to population differences:

Charleston MSA unemployment: 23,576

Columbia MSA unemployment: 28,462

Greenville MSA unemployment: 25,288

Actually, it's better to look at things percentage-wise because of population differences. Populous metro areas will have lots of unemployed people but it would be folly to think that more populous metro areas are faring worse than less populous ones just based on raw numbers. But there's really not much difference percentage-wise or in terms of raw numbers among SC's Big Three because the population differences aren't drastic.

Allendale County is getting hit HARD. It's almost 1 out of 5 people there out of work. Unbelievable.

[Captain Worley]

Allendale's unemployment figures have never been that great, IIRC.

[gs3]

Greenville has landed another headquarters. redi-Group, a quality control company for the automotive industry will put their North American headquarters in Greenville County. 250 new jobs.

http://www.thestate.com/breaking/story/666199.html

[monsoon]

I'll bet the Raleigh MSA has more unemployed than any of our big three, but percentage-wise they are performing a lot better. But then again if you go off actual numbers and you're a positive person, you can look at it conversely and consider the number of people in each MSA who are employed.

Well maybe not so well these days. IBM, one of their largest employers, (~11,000) started laying off people there last week along with almost every other tech company in the Triangle taking similar action. In fact, in the nation, most of the heavy layoffs started on January 5 and have been bad almost every day since then. There were something like 600,000 layoffs announced between the 5th and the 23rd. This week there were 72,000 more on Monday alone, and more yesterday and today. This would not count employers not required to announce their layoffs and/or too small to notice, and the layoffs being handled in such a way at some companies as not to be noticed.

I suspect the numbers posted above for unemployment in SC are going to look pretty good as compared to what they are going to be for January. It's probably going to hit the areas where there is manufacturing and business jobs as the construction industry, hospitality and services industry have already been hit pretty hard.

[CorgiMatt]

A new development company in Columbia will focus on city center infill development and revitalization in cities across the Southeast.

http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/news...alization?rss=0

[krazeeboi]

An article in The State that reports a plant in Newberry County is shutting down, putting 570 people out of work, reiterates why the unemployment situation in SC has been so bad for several years now: the state never really replaced the disappearing manufacturing jobs with new industries, and the state's urban areas--which do a decent job at attracting new jobs to the state--aren't large enough to offset the losses in the rural areas of the state.