Not better off
Published July 11, 2015
By Thomas Mills, Politics NC, July 10, 2015.
If you want to know how that “Carolina Comeback” is affecting North Carolina families, look no further than median income. The North Carolina Democratic Party yesterday sent out a press release showing that median income under Republicans has dropped $4,000 and is now 47th lowest in the nation. When they took control, North Carolina was ranked 38th in the nation.
These are the numbers should be causing Republicans to lose sleep. Not only are we behind where we were when the GOP took over, we’ve fallen further than our Southern neighbors. While most of them have seen at least short periods of increasing income over the past five years, we’ve seen none.
Once again, South Carolina is eating our lunch. In 2011, they were 50th in nation in median income. Today, they are 42. Their standing has improved eight places while ours has fallen nine. Thanks, GOP.
As Neil Irwin, the New York Times senior economic correspondent, says, the median income is the “rubber-meets-road measure of whether the economy is working for the mass of Americans.” In North Carolina, it’s not. The jobs McCrory and company tout are mostly low-paying. According to the NC Budget and Tax Center, almost 60% of new jobs pay poverty-level wages.
Two years ago, Pat McCrory responded to criticism by promising that North Carolina was on the verge of a powerful comeback. It hasn’t materialized. Not only are our wages lagging behind the rest of the South, so is our gross domestic product. Our GDP is below more than half of the other Southern states.
Republicans have been arguing that their tax cuts and “tough-love” approach to kicking people off unemployment insurance resulted in a low unemployment rate and a revenue surplus. The revenue surplus actually came from raising taxes on small business, seniors citizens, and the working poor while the unemployment rate dropped because they kicked those folks off the unemployment rolls, not because of any huge job growth.
Republican economic policies have failed the middle class in North Carolina. We’ve fallen further and recovered slower than most of the country. When voters ask the question, “Am I better off today than I was four years ago,” the answer, right now, is “No.”
July 11, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Norm Kelly says:
'The jobs McCrory and company tout are mostly low-paying.'
Funny. When the exact same words are used against the current occupier, libs tell us we are racist. Or that we are looking at the wrong stats. But mostly that we are racist!
So, the conclusion to be garnered from this post? Could it possibly be that the state was oh-so-much better off under demon rule? The tax & spend policies of the demon party was better for the state? The constant deficit spending was better for the state? How so? Being in debt to the central planners for continued extensions of unemployment benefits was good how? Especially when one considers the fact that those same demons had NO PLAN to repay the debt!
When the demons accepted money from central planners for high speed rail, after it was rejected by some other state, how did this make us better off? Taking money to create a rail scheme that would cost the state so much more than the grant from the central planners. At a time when the state could ill afford this never ending expenditure. And then there's the lake-rated ferry to be used to get school kids from the outer banks on the ocean. Not an ocean-rated ferry for school kids, but a lake-rated ferry. This was a wise purchase how?
And then there's the Communist Core bribe that was accepted by the socialist party. How did this improve education in our state?
How about grossly limiting charter schools? This helped kids how? Restricting school choice for ANY family helps the state's children how?
Then there's the lottery. How has state-sponsored gambling improved education? How has it improved the economy? At the same time that the state was in the process of stamping out private-sector gambling because it was bad for the citizens, the same group was in the process of implementing state-sponsored gambling. Once again, proving that government monopolies are the answer. Never should government allow private sector competition. Only enter a market when it can be taken over. Because government is so much more efficient than private sector businesses? Because it's better for citizens when choice is eliminated?
Every scheme of the left can be countered with intelligent, logical, proven ideas. Just like socialism can be proven to fail every time. Take Greece as a perfect example. The people were told that their economy would suffer greatly, hurting everyone, and still the majority voted to keep their unsustainable government largesse in place. Yet, for some unknown, unexplainable reason, the socialist party in our country is alive and well. And those like Billary and Warren are running on increasing socialist reach in our nation. Moving further along the socialist path. As if this is a winning strategy. But, then, among the low-information voters that are typically demon supporters, paying for votes usually works!
July 11, 2015 at 1:52 pm
bruce stanley says:
We'll see how much the middle class thinks democratic policies are good for them this fall when the ACA employer mandate kicks in after being delayed for a year.
July 14, 2015 at 12:37 pm
Donald Byrd says:
How did we improve under Mike and Bev?
