Saturday, May 05, 2012

Where to do business

CEOs like Texas. And Florida and North Carolina and Tennessee and Indiana and Virginia and South Carolina and Georgia and Utah and Arizona. These are the 10 states that business leaders think are the best for business in that order, with Texas state at the  top. CEOs were asked to grade states in which they do business among a variety of areas, including tax and regulation, quality of workforce and living environment. Of course,  it is their job to maximize profits - the ability to make a buck as quick as they can.

Those top 10 states – the ones CEOs like – had 16.7 percent of their total adult population in poverty against the national average of 15.3 percent. The bottom 10 – those state the bosses disliked: From 10th worst, Hawaii – through Oregon, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois and New York – to the CEOs' most-despised location, California, the poverty rate is below the national average rate at 14.4 percent.

State-by-state income and cost-of-living measures the CEO's top 10 states averaged $37,277 per capita for 2011; their bottom 10 was at $46,283

Rick Scott, governor of Florida, cut state government, corporate income taxes and business regulations, promising Florida would become a corporate-friendly state that would attract new companies and new jobs. In Florida, most of the jobs created under Scott are in the lowest-paying sectors, wages and benefits have decreased for workers at the bottom. The largest number of new jobs created in the state came in the leisure and hospitality industry, which pays average annual wages of $21,448. The bottom 20 percent of earners in Florida have seen their wages actually drop. Florida has 10 percent of the country’s homeless population. In January 2011, Florida claimed one-third of all U.S. homeless who didn’t have any shelter. To pay for more school funding in his budget, Scott is targeting Medicaid, the health care program for low-income families. Robbing Peter to pay Paul!

Interesting, though, isn't it? That the states with the best rankings here have the lowest per capita incomes, highest poverty rates, and in the case of Texas, one of the highest percentages of people with no health insurance?  Also by and large they have a history of lax environmental regulation, contributing to the fact that residents of these highly ranks states also tend to have shorter life spans. And just where do CEOs choose to live themselves, based on the number of millionaires per 100,000 person, well, they are more likely to live in California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut., Massachusetts. Does that say something? 

So do businesses seek sites where local people might be more desperate to work and willing to work for lower wages? SOYMB will let you decide!

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