North Carolina’s Economic Success Story: Jonathan Williams on The Pete Kaliner Show

Jonathan Williams, ALEC Executive Vice President of Policy and Chief Economist, spoke with Pete Kaliner of WBT in Charlotte about North Carolina’s #2 economic outlook ranking in the latest edition of Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index.

It’s only been in the last decade that North Carolina has really turned it around when it comes to competitiveness. A decade ago, North Carolina ranked in the mid-20s in economic outlook. It is because of the actions by then-Speaker Tom Tillis, the legislature, Governor McCrory, and others, that North Carolina became a flat tax state.  The economic results are encouraging. North Carolina has really turned the corner and become one of the most economically free states in the country. So sometimes the results take that time. Also, South Carolina has a lot of positive things that they’ve done as well in terms of cutting taxes, maybe not as aggressively as in North Carolina’s case, but South Carolina is another great example of the state getting it right.

To paraphrase Jack Kemp, who was a great friend of ALEC as a national leader advocating for good tax policy, you don’t raise real revenue in the long term first by raising tax rates. You raise the amount of revenue for your state by having more taxpayers come into your state and more businesses opening up.

When you see the success of North Carolina, 600,000 new Americans came in over the last decade alone after you created real tax reform where it became a flat tax and did all the things that made North Carolina second best in Rich States, Poor States, and the revenues keep coming in, so that you have surpluses that are still there in Raleigh. You even had enough revenue to give teachers a pay raise. You’re getting a tax policy right. You make yourself more competitive so that it’s a holistic win for everybody across the board.