So, Ned Barnett has a column in the Raleigh News & Observer today asserting that, as the headline put it, Business recruitment stumbles in NC. Several friends have forwarded it to me, some of them liberals with snide digs added in about the failure of Republican policies recently enacted in the state. Given his assertion, youd think Ned would present some actual evidence that business recruitment in North Carolina is stumbling. But that would be hard to do. Im not aware of any timely measures of the net number of businesses recruited to or from individual states, or even the net number of businesses created or lost in states since the advent of the NC policies in question (tax reform, regulatory reform, etc.) The next best thing would be to count the number of private-sector jobs created in NC and other states. Over the past year, private-sector job growth averaged 2.1 percent across the country. NCs rate was 2.5 percent. Regionally, the rate of private-sector job creation averaged 2.1 percent in our immediate neighborhood (NC and its four neighboring states), 2.2 percent in the nine jurisdictions that make up the South Atlantic Census region (eight states & DC), and 2 percent in the South (11 states). In other words, Ned wrote an entire column devoted to discussing potential reasons why something might be happening (stumbling business recruitment) even though it isnt actually happening. Why do NC conservatives increasingly ignore what the N&O editorial page prints? Not because we are tuning out information we dont want to hear. Other liberals do a far better job of arguing their case. We simply dont want to waste our time on poorly researched, poorly argued material. Although I suppose I just wasted a few minutes responding to this.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 16:33:51 +0000