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<strong><span style="color: #0000ff;">Click Here <span style="color: #000000;">to read</span> <span style="color: #000000;">Part 1</span></span>
</strong>

When the mills began shutting down, those with marketable skills left to seek employment elsewhere. Some stayed, hunkering down, hoping for a comeback. Others attached themselves to the County Government, School District and City of Laurinburg. While this may have been a good move when viewed from an individual perspective, it's been an absolute disaster for the economy.

Today, government employment stands as the cornerstone of Scotland County's economy. This would be great except that government doesn't actually produce anything, rather it consumes (through the miracle of taxation and fees) that which others have toiled to produce.

Government is a conduit via which the fruits of others labor gets redistributed to favored friends, political cronies and valuable vote generating demographic constituencies. This time tested mechanism has remained in place throughout history. No exceptions!

To make matters worse, when government employee pensions become 'vested', employees often move to new positions so they can qualify for yet another pension. Rinse and repeat several times and you can see that by the time actual retirement age is reached many government workers retire with multiple pension checks coming in each month. Talk about striking gold!

This very sweet deal for government types is unfortunately destroying our public finances, as skyrocketing pension and benefit costs now eat up an enormous share of the public budget. Is it any wonder County, Municipal and School coffers are running on empty? As dire as this situation is, it's 'baked into the cake' that things are only going to get worse if we refuse to change course.

<strong>We Must:</strong>
<ul>
 	<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Dramatically reduce expenses</span> of Scotland County Government, Laurinburg City Government and Scotland County Schools.</li>
 	<li>Organically grow 'real' 21st century employment opportunities that provide living, family wages.</li>
 	<li>Banish slavery once and for all, ridding ourselves from dependence upon an institutionalized entitlement-welfare model that is dragging us into the abyss.</li>
 	<li>Offer cutting edge education, free from the shackles imposed by burdensome, obsolete rules and regulations.</li>
</ul>
Is this going to be easy? Will it be quick? Do we need more commissions, boards, blue ribbon panels, study groups, pedigreed intellectuals or highly compensated government bureaucrats? do we need a corporation charged with Economic Development, chaired by an expensive Director, paid for out of the public purse?

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<blockquote>"<em>Based on its unemployment rate, median household income, population growth, and property tax base per capita, Scotland is consistently <a id="KonaLink0" class="kLink" href="http://laurinburgexchange.com/news/ap-wire/3568/county-could-lose-tier-status#"><span style="color: #595959;"><span class="kLink">classified</span></span></a> by the N.C. Department of Commerce as a Tier I county — among the 40 most distressed in the state.</em>" <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="http://laurinburgexchange.com/news/ap-wire/3568/county-could-lose-tier-status" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #ff0000;">DIETER - HERE'S PART 1 FOR YOUR REVIEW:</span>

<strong>Scotland is the most economically distressed county in North Carolina</strong>. Unfortunately, that's not breaking news.

We wholeheartedly agree with sentiments expressed by State Senator Tom McInnes, who recently stated: "The way it is right now, we can’t make anybody locate a plant in Scotland County if they don’t want to come here. We’ve got to give them a reason to come here. We’re going to have to work in a different way than we’ve been working..."

Despite longstanding and ongoing attempts by County gurus to bring in new industry, the fact is Scotland County will never again be a manufacturing magnet. Mexico's new and highly automated state of the art plants pay wages of only $2 per hour and No benefits. Even Chinese wages are higher, causing factories there to now relocate to cheaper venues like Vietnam in order to compete. Despite often repeated prognostications, even 'The Donald' won't be able to reverse this trend.

As Senator McInnis continued: "... we’re going to have to work together... to offer 21st century curricula for <strong>the jobs that we have available and not the jobs that we wish we had.</strong>”

America was founded upon the concept of a largely self regulating and self righting <strong>Free Market Economy</strong>. This was by no means perfect, but a great, prosperous and self governing republic was built upon its foundation. We became 'The Shining Light on the Hill' that others looked up to and sought to emulate. Unfortunately, that was a long time ago.

There can be no doubt that Scotland County was destined to experience difficult times when mills and manufacturing began fleeing, first to China and then Mexico, but according to Free Market dogma, things would have eventually righted themselves had market forces been allowed to play out.

That didn't happen, and today, decades later, despite massive application of state and federal grant programs and tax incentives being thrown at the problem, Scotland County remains mired in a Deep Depression. Worse yet, subtract state and federal welfare programs, along with generous USDA subsidies, supports, loans and grants, and Scotland County's economy would be deader as a door nail.

The reasons the Revival never took hold here are easily identified, straight forward, and well understood... not complicated at all. <strong>The question is: Are we going do anything about it or do we intend to mire in this pig slop until there is absolutely nothing left?</strong>

Before we move on, let us share a brief but telling story. After purchasing a former manufacturing plant, we made an appointment to talk with Scotland County's Director of Economic Development. He proved to be friendly, intelligent, well educated, articulate and courteous. He was also highly compensated with a salary of $80k per year, plus a generous benefit package.

We began the discussion with our vision of how we could play a role in assisting the County from its obsolete manufacturing based economic model to a forward looking high tech model, but nevertheless, one that could, with little training, take advantage of the County's existing, but largely unskilled human resource base.

The Director listened politely, but soon enough broke in, stating with crystalline clarity, that unless we were prepared to bring at least 700 jobs to the County (for starters), it wasn't worth his time to continue talking with us. We expressed puzzlement as to that magic 700 job number, wherein he replied that the County was putting the final touches on a project that would bring a large Japanese clutch manufacturing operation to the County that would employ 700.

We weren't quite ready to take no for an answer and inquired who was next on the County ladder that we could talk with. The County Manager was 'the man', but was not presently available. We left our contact information and we assured he would contact us. We never heard back.

<strong>End of Part 1 - Stay turned for
</strong>

Source:

<a href="http://laurinburgexchange.com/news/ap-wire/3568/county-could-lose-tier-status" target="_blank">Laurinburg Exchange</a>

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