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As our nation prepares to celebrate its independence, it is important to consider just how “free” we really are as a country. The answer to that question? It depends on where in the country you live …
This week, consumer financial website WalletHub published the results of a new study seeking to address that question. Entitled ‘2023’s Most and Least Dependent States,’ the study compared all fifty states based on five sources of dependency: Consumer finances, government assistance, the job market, international trade and personal vices.
“We broke down these categories into 39 key indicators of independence in order to determine which states are most self-sustaining,” the report’s authors noted.
How free is South Carolina? Not very …
The Palmetto State scored an atrocious 41.71 on this index – ranking No. 45 in the nation. Only West Virginia, Alaska, Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana fared worse. By contrast, regional rival Florida ranked No. 3 with a score of 61.63 while Virginia ranked No. 5 (60.47) and North Carolina ranked No. 14 (56.79).
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South Carolina struggled on virtually every category measured by this index, ranking No. 42 nationally in its financial dependency, No. 43 in its government dependency, No. 47 in international trade dependency and No. 39 in “vice dependency,” which referred to the percentage of its adult population using drugs, engaging in binge drinking or suffering from a gambling disorder.
The lone bright spot for the Palmetto State was its No. 18 national ranking related to “job market dependency,” although this metric was based in large part on the notoriously unreliable unemployment rate. My guess is had WalletHub’s researchers highlighted South Carolina’s anemic labor participation rate – the real measure of employment security in this country – the outcomes would not have been so good.
As this news outlet has often pointed out, despite “Republican” supermajorities approving massive new investments in antiquated, bloated bureaucracies and all manner of corporate welfare subsidies – the needle simply isn’t moving for South Carolina and her citizens.
Report after report shows South Carolina falling further behind the rest of the country on all the key indicators – including economic, academic, public safety metrics.
When will things change? Only when we change our status quo leaders …
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven children.
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3 comments
FITSNEWS did it’s part by taking a PPP federal handout to pay for a beach vacation.
Don’t worry, Biden and the Democrats (with zero help from your Republican reps) have handed your Stare millions and millions of dollars to help improve its third-world status amongst the USA through their Infrastructure legislation.
I’m sure Nancy will take credit for something she voted against, but it’s not like she or her party have any positive accomplishments of their own to run on.
Losers.
It’s laughable thinking the solution is a change in government. Education drives the rest of the outcomes and that has never been fixed by the government, simply because the government can’t ever solve it. Until education is valued at home by most of the citizens, things won’t improve.
For far too long we focused on agriculture and mills instead of higher education. As a result we have large portions of the state where there is no value placed on anything other than a high school diploma. We have one of the best technical college programs in the nation, yet it’s underutilized. Admissions to most 4 year schools require little more than a heartbeat, yet less than 30% of the state’s residents have a 4 year degree (and I suspect a fair amount of these cane from off).