Guest Column: ‘Groundhog Day’ For Small Businesses In South Carolina

Good piece. I would love to see some scrappy investigative journalist do a deep dive on companies that were given publicly funded incentive packages like this, and find out how many of them actually produced the number of jobs required to receive the package, and if they did not, if the State ever actually pulled the trigger on any of those clawback procedures. I would also love to see an academic researcher, maybe someone seeking their PhD in economics or MBA at Darla Moore, do a economic study to find out if these state funded incentive packages, on a macro level, produced a significant net positive result for the state’s economy – it seems like it did with BMW and Boeing, but the jury is out on many others. Also, the author’s warning about EVs is quite warranted: Ford and GM have been losing their shirt thus far in the EV market, despite billions in public subsidies – the public is just not buying these things in the numbers needed to make them financially viable. The batteries on these cars are so expensive that consumers balk when they hear what it might cost them to replace them; this is a major part of why EVs perform poorly in the used car market. They also add so much weight to the vehicle in comparison to a gas powered car that there are instances of older parking garages collapsing or structurally failing. Bottom line, we don’t need any more black- eye debacles on huge state- backed industry expansion or construction projects like the SCANA/Santee Cooper Monticello nuclear plant expansion – which still stands as the largest failed construction project in the entire history of the United States.