Our best, brightest are moving away
We are constantly bombarded with stories about the crisis at the U.S. southern border. However, there’s another border crisis we seldom hear about, a crisis that should be very troubling if you are a South Carolina taxpayer.
A recent study by the South Carlina Department of Employment and Workforce shows that 37% of South Carolina college graduates take up employment outside the Palmetto State after graduation. The percentage is even higher for STEM graduates and medical professionals. If you’re a S.C. taxpayer this means that your taxes are being spent to educate young people who will ultimately take their skills, their knowledge, and their earning power elsewhere.
This phenomenon is nothing new. College graduates have traditionally gone where their earning power is greatest. However, according to a study by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committe, the rate of outward migration from states like South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi has increased significantly in the past 20 years.
Factors cited for this increase are largely political. It turns out many young professionals do not want to live in states that are openly hostile to reproductive choice, voting rights, education, health care, the environment, and LGBTQ rights. Over the past 20 years, South Carolina and the other states have all enacted regressive legislation that is highly unattractive to many young college graduates.
The exodus of college grads has a significant ripple effect. High-tech companies locate and expand into states where they can attract qualified employees. States like California, Massachusetts, and New York succeed while states like South Carolina get left behind. This exodus of young talent is one of the major reasons S.C. ranks so low in education (42), health care (36), and opportunity (38) as reported in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 annual performance rankings. Our elected leaders in Columbia are driving away many of the young people who could make a real positive difference here.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Please research the candidates and vote wisely in 2024. Your vote matters.
– Peter Birschbach, Port Royal
Response to slander
From the mountaintop of himself, Mr. Lang is, of course, free to criticize all sorts of others as “degenerates.” From on high he can view peace degenerate into world-wide war, which once offered him a career. He can see the vigor of youth slow and degenerate into age, which he will surely escape. And he can watch democracies degenerate into autocracies, which eliminate his “degenerates” quite handily, as history has demonstrated. But lest he forget, mountaintops also degenerate into the lower lands where most of us live.
– Quitman Marshall, Beaufort
Do some serious rethinking
The traffic situations on Boundary Street and Ribaut Road are not the same. Not exactly “apples to oranges” – they’re both roads after all – but they are not comparable. County staffer Brittanee Bishop was quoted in a recent Island News article saying that the Boundary Street re-striping effort was partly to “validate assumptions made on the Ribaut Road project.” The situations are very different and the plan for Ribaut is not at all similar to the Boundary Street re-striping idea.
The proposal for Boundary includes a wide, center turn lane. On most of the Ribaut project there is no turn lane proposed, only a single lane in each direction with a landscaped median.
Ribaut Road passes two hospitals and two fire stations. If an emergency vehicle needs to travel Ribaut, as they do every day, there is no place under the new proposal for cars to get out of the way other than driving up on the sidewalk or into the shrubbery. At least on Boundary there is a turning lane that could be traveled by an ambulance, police car or fire truck.
The most important difference between the two roads is that there is no alternative to Ribaut Road. Ribaut provides the only north/south route between Beaufort and Port Royal, and it is the only route by which a vehicle can access Beaufort Memorial Hospital. If Boundary Street were to become impassable vehicles could be rerouted down any of a number of other east/west streets. There is no similar option for Ribaut Road.
So play with the re-striping of Boundary Street all you want. It’s cheap and it’s relatively harmless. Do some serious rethinking before you spend millions of taxpayer dollars to create a possibly impassable and dangerous bottleneck on Ribaut Road.
– Beekman Webb, Beaufort
We are blessed with a free library
I continue to appreciate the excellent local and state news coverage provided by The Island News – thank you!
And for those of us who search beyond social media for an understanding of national and global events, we are blessed with FREE access to national newspapers and magazines through The Beaufort County Library system. A FREE library card is all we need to read daily editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, online from home or phone, thanks to our library. It’s FREE and easy! Details at beaufortcountylibrary.org/borrow.
– Carol Brown, Beaufort
A little bothered
Thomas H. Long – Your comments greatly bothered me. Especially for a retired military officer.
1. Election interference by Russia was verified by the Congress, NSA, FBI, and CIA. 2. January 6 was no tourist visit. It was an insurrection caused by Trump.
Evangelicals – Trump was the most amoral president in history. Adultery, sexual assault, stating he could grab any woman’s !@#$% and get away with it. Sex with a porn star, shoot and kill someone in Times Square and get away with it, etc., etc., etc.
Border – Trump accomplished nothing, Biden did. Crime was higher under Trump than Biden. Trump did nothing for the environment, Biden did. Biden’s job creation, GNP, and stock market are all higher than Trump’s.
As a retired military man you especially stun me being a Trump supporter. Trump screwed our allies and praised our enemies such as Russia, China, and North Korea. His cronies blocked military promotions and are trying to block aid to Ukraine.
Book legislation – As President Reagan said, “Here we go again.” Sexually explicit books? Republicans will have to start with the most sexually explicit book in history, The Bible. Instead of having legislation and groups such as Moms for Liberty, etc., how about we do something simple. You regulate what your child can read and Americans can regulate what their child reads.
– Don Cass, Beaufort
Love the veterans coverage
Dear Editor Mike McCombs, The Island News – I live in the Lowcountry of SC for half of the year and in Detroit, Mich., the other half of the year. I read and enjoy The Island News articles on veterans’ benefits in your excellent newspaper each week.
The Island News Team and your veterans benefits writer Larry Dandridge should be very proud of what you are doing for our Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Coast Guardsmen and Women, and Airmen and women, and their families. Your weekly articles are easy to understand and the extra help your Dandridge is willing to give veterans is nothing less than marvelous. Thank you.
– Sanford Turbow
