ROSE-COLORED GLASSES, ANYONE?
By FITSNEWS || South Carolinians overwhelmingly believe their country is on the “wrong track” – and have serious concerns about its economy. Yet their views on the Palmetto State and its economic situation are much cheerier – despite a host of measurements showing South Carolina falling further behind the rest of the country.
According to a recent Winthrop University poll, 67.1 percent of South Carolinians said their country was moving in the wrong direction compared to only 25.5 percent who felt it was on the “right track.” When asked about the current path of South Carolina, though, 52.8 percent responded that the state was on the “right track” compared to 37.6 percent who felt it was moving in the “wrong direction.”
Really? Surely they know about South Carolina’s dismal income situation … or its abysmally low labor participation rate … right?
Or maybe not …
Anyway, asked about the national economy 43.7 percent of South Carolinians described it as good (although only 4.6 percent said it was “very good”) compared to 54.1 percent who described it as bad (including 20.2 percent who said it was “very bad”). Meanwhile 51.8 percent said they thought the national economy was “getting better” compared to 42.3 percent who said they thought it was getting worse.
As for the South Carolina economy, 66.8 percent of respondents said it was good (including 5.3 percent who said it was “very good”) while only 30.5 percent said it was bad (including only 6.5 percent who described it as “very bad”). A whopping 67.8 percent of respondents indicated they thought the Palmetto State economy was improving compared to 24.2 percent who thought it was getting worse.
We’re sure that will show up in holiday shopping totals … errrr … never mind.
Back in September – when Business Insider ranked the Palmetto State economy as the nation’s fifth-worst – we wondered whether the people of our state would eventually clue in on what’s happening around them.
“Will South Carolinians ever wake up and figure out just how badly they have it?” we wrote. “Don’t count on it … not as long as the government-run schools keep dumbing people down.”
Not to mention the liberal, legacy press …
For those of you keeping score at home, Winthrop surveyed 852 South Carolina residents using landlines and cell phones between November 9-16. Its poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
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42 comments
Finally Sic Willie gets to his point. All ills of SC are directly sourced to “government-run” schools. Now if we had his voucher scam SC would zoom to the top.
Actually it will take a generation. But just think of the number of children we have wasted at the alter of govt. schools. Tax credits rather than vouchers are the way to go. I used to be for vouchers till someone reminded me that “what the govt. pays for, the govt. can control.”
More drivel. Tax credits my ass. Tax credits mean little to those of low or middle income and are so regressive by its very nature as to be laughable. There is nothing equal or publicly facilitating about tax credits.
Do you have any idea the level of income that is necessary to utilize a tax credit of $9750/year (avg. private school tuition in SC) after deductions, expenses and other income reducing tax items?
We can’t afford one school system in SC as it currently stands, much less two systems which is exactly where the voucher scam or tax credit fraud would lead us.
“Do you have any idea the level of income that is necessary to utilize a tax credit of $9750/year (avg. private school tuition in SC) after deductions, expenses and other income reducing tax items?”
1st, who says it has to be the full amount?
2nd, the credit as it stands is still almost $2k less per student that it’s costing SC.
So your comment that “we can’t afford one school system” is pure buffoonery at it’s best.
Please stop the stupid argument. Take a math class. Paying money to people who already have children in private school does not save the state one red cent. it increases the cost of education for everyone except the people who have kids in private school. People with children in public school and people with no children pay more so that wealthy people with children in private school can pay less.
When private schools come up with an admission process that does not take into consideration who you are, how much money you have, what your religion is, and who your parents are, then maybe state funding would be an option. But that would defeat the purpose. People with kids in private schools just want money. They do not want to compete with kids currently in public schools for private school admission. They might not get in.
Yes.Private schools and home schooling.Charter schools are failing like the public schools.
ANY school the government has its hands in now and in the future will be promoting social justice and perverted lifestyles as its core foundation.
SC has a 350 year cultural history that reflects its people’s adamant refusal to accept that we can improve by studying, copying, or mimicking others who have it better. We are convinced that we know it all and equally convinced that the rabble rousers of history (currently the Tea Party) is thoughtful, sincere, or wise.
Education is the great equalizer but we don’t want it because it just might bring us just the equality of hope, promise, and ultimately, success that accompanies it. First it was agricultural interests, then textiles, now simply a class of “me first” greed and fear mongers who are opposed to progress.
This poll holds no surprise for me and shouldn’t for anyone who has even a modicum of objective observance of our current status or our historical past.
GREAT comment. +2 to you.
I don’t know where you live (probably near Columbia), but here in the CHS area, if you interviewed 852 people, there’s a good chance that about 700 of them wouldn’t be from here, and that at least 400 of them would be from Ohio.
How does that affect your 350 year cultural history when 82% of the people in teh poll (that you think are idiots and have poor education) in reality have no idea about this history nor education you speak of?
I don’t think they are idiots, that would be your word. I think they are a bit ignorant of both history, current reality and a pathway to progress.
I think you missed the point, sport. If over half of the people aren’t from here and this is where the opinions are coming from maybe its not a “cultural” thing?
If you are suggesting that 82% of the SC population or even more than 50% are non-natives, then your word is self-descriptive.
You are a fucking idiot. No different than a ‘Gruber’.
Progress to you is the perversion of our communities. The destruction of traditional values and the elimination of the moral foundations this country was built on.SC has retained these virtues.
Perfect? No. A great place to live? Yes.
If you don’t think there is a cultural historical influence in SC society, then you are one of those I speak of below.
By the way, Ohioans dumb down our population. They don’t raise it.
Culture is what they seek. They confuse it with warm weather and golf.
If you would have attended THE Ohio State University and received a REAL education you fuckin liberal/socialists wouldn’t be walking around in a stupor worshipping homosexuality and legalized drugs while hating your country.
I guessed it but didn’t state it. You’re an Ohioan aren’t you?
Play golf much?
“If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States” — HLM
anyone who disagrees with you…. you automatically make up a whole history for them, you do all the time either as guest or grand asshole or sandi etc..is that how you view the world?, anyone who disagrees is automatically a 1. socialist 2. pervert. 3 homosexual 4. liberal etc etc..the truth is you are so insecure the only way you can justify your fucked up reality it to fit everyone else into a box you can understand.
guest did you major in philosophy or english at “Clumson”? You are the perfect example in what is the problem with South Carolina! I suggest that you take up Jimbob’s offer in making love.
You forgot to include the “purity of their body fluids”
The only traditional values in South Carolina are false pride,spouse and alcohol abuse, throwing garbage all over the roadways, more commercial landfills than just about every other state and being one the top owners of trailers as the sole domicile.
Virtues?? Are you aware that South Carolina is one of the top 5 states that access porn on the internet?
That old saying that South Carolina is too small to be a nation but too big to be an insane asylum rings more true every day.
“Education is the great equalizer but we don’t want it because it just might bring us just the equality of hope, promise, and ultimately, success that accompanies it.”
What the fuck are you talking about? We have two major, substantially subsidized colleges in state and a plethora of smaller ones.
What circle of friends do you travel with that are saying, “Yea, fuck education!” ?!?!?!
Or are you just projecting your feelings onto reality?
FFS, what a piece of tripe you’ve just written.
You demonize Tea Party people as dumb rabble rousers(nice elitism btw!) and then bitch about “fear mongering”. You’re a fucking hypocritical idiot.
Rabble rousers, Sir, would include the Tillmanites and other populist “leaders” of SC history including our race baiters.
Elitists would include the Lords Proprietors, Hamptonites and others who by birth considered them above the citizenry and for the most part were accepted as such by the same.
I, Sir, am the son of a sharecropper. Self-educated in SC’s public schools from 1st Grade thru University.
Nothing elitist in my background.
“Rabble rousers, Sir, would include the Tillmanites and other populist “leaders” of SC history including our race baiters.”
Who gives a shit who you think the “rabblerousers” are? You are an elitist, just a self hating one.
Enough with the fear mongering. The “rabble” have good reasons to be pissed at our state government.
“The “rabble” have good reasons to be pissed at our state government.”
Damn straight they do. But they aren’t. Thats the point of the poll. Republicans have been running this state into the ground for 20 years, but still the “rabble” vote them in over and over.
Oh and by the way. Republicans have been gutting higher education in this state . The two major Universities you speak of receive less and less of their funding from the state every year.
After adjusting for inflation Per-student funding in South Carolina is down by more than 40 percent since 2008.
“Damn straight they do. But they aren’t. ”
That simply doesn’t jive with reality. They aren’t walking around wearing patriot hats carrying poorly written signs in front of gov’t buildings because they are happy.
“After adjusting for inflation Per-student funding in South Carolina is down by more than 40 percent since 2008.”
What do you want to bet that that problem exists in a lot of other states too? When you quadruple the monetary base it takes time for everyone to adjust, especially when the economy/tax base is still reeling.
The Tea Partiers are just tools of the GOP. Republicans and the Tea Party are one in the same. How can you protest your own policies. Republicans have been running this state for two decades. We have been going down hill the entire time. Life for the average SC citizen was way better in the 70s and 80s than it is today. Yet Tea Partiers support Republicans? Their protests are meaningless because they don’t really oppose the people who are running government. They just shout meaningless phrases, like “I want my country back.”
They are happy in Dumbfukistan.
The two major universities “receive less and less” because they require less and less – they’re both largely self sufficient.
That’s crazy. They don’t require less and less. They require more and more, at a time when the state is providing less and less. The result is a soaring cost of what use to be “public” education.
Me thinks not, Colonel. These “two major universities” are more involved in football than academics. And I ask you sir, what is the ratio of white players versus black players? How many complete their education? And if they do, what were their majors? And are they delivery mail or working for USPS?????
Uh, to most Teapartiers elitists just means you are smart. They don’t really like smart people, because smart people point out their BS, ask them questions they don’t understand or Fox or Rush did not give them an answer to, and point out facts that don’t mesh with right wing talking points.
Don’t waste your time trying to argue (let alone rationalize) with right wing-nuts.
You’d have more success getting a telemarketer to buy your product/service!!!!!
“When asked about the current path of South Carolina, though, 52.8 percent responded that the state was on the “right track”…”
How scary is that?
You’ll never wake up,so why should any other,’South Carolinian’?
hahahahahaha
“You’ll never wake up,so why should any other,’South Carolinian’?”
Are you saying he’s Asleep at the Will?
Improving educadtional reforms, increased access to affordable health insurance, higher manufacturing output – is the wrong direct. Dumb, fiscally broke and rampant rural poverty – right direction. Gosh – you really have to wonder about the idiots in this Grand Tango state.
Clarendonian…Late/Upper or Early/Lower rock?
It could not have been better expressed over 150 years ago: “South Carolina, too small to be a nation, too large to be an insane Asylum.”
Yep, that should be on the vehicle tag instead “Beautiful places,smiling faces”
and the state employee telephone greeting of “It’s a beautiful day in South Carolina”
I’d buy one if it was available fer sure!!!!!!!
What is the “right” track? We’ve been governed by the tea party for the past four years how could that possibly put us on the “wrong” track?
Question: How does the rest of the world see SC?
Answer: Ever seen the movie Deliverance?