Perception is reality. Democrats have been limping along on that crutch
for decades. Facts mean nothing. History is to be ignored. Failed policies would work
if the “right people” where in charge.
Day is night. Night is day. And through it all, the mockingbird sings.
North Carolina, once again, is experiencing Democratic
deceit. These political operatives would
kill that mockingbird if it didn’t sing their song of lies. John Hood, a bird watcher, at Carolina Journal wrote
an op-ed outlining the fiscal policies of the Southeast region. Here is an excerpt:
To put things
another way, the Left has constructed a theory of North Carolina
Exceptionalism. It holds that the state has outperformed its regional peers by
maintaining distinctive public policies. Some liberals express the theory by
sneering at places like South Carolina and Texas. The Right has responded by
challenging the theory’s premise — that North Carolina has significantly
outperformed the rest of the Southeast — as well as the empirical basis for the
assertion that higher taxes to fund higher spending results in faster economic
growth.
Regarding the premise, look at the standard measure of gross domestic product. I recently constructed a nationwide comparison of state GDP trends as compound annual growth rates expressed in four-year increments (corresponding to the terms of North Carolina’s governors). Since 1965, North Carolina’s economy has grown faster than the national average, certainly, but so have the economies of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and most other Southeastern states. North Carolina’s average growth rate during the period was 7.4 percent (in nominal dollars). The Southeast average was 7.3 percent. Georgia (7.8 percent) and Virginia (7.6 percent) grew a little faster than North Carolina. South Carolina (7.3 percent), and Tennessee (7.1 percent) grew a little slower.
Relatively speaking, North Carolina’s strongest performance occurred during the 1980s, when annual growth in the state’s GDP averaged about a percentage point above that of the Southeast. During the 1970s, however, North Carolina’s growth rate was about a point lower than the regional average.
Since the late 1990s, economic growth in North Carolina has been, at best, lackluster. Which states had the strongest growth? The top 15 states were, in order: North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Texas, South Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Nebraska, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, and Maryland. Almost all of these states have either large energy and resource-extraction industries, relatively small and low-cost state governments, or both.
And if that mockingbird don’t sing….
