Actually a balanced realistic budget is the answer. If your GOP budget plan starts with the words "We will cut taxes and the economy with stimulate thereby creating more tax revenue" then you have failed completely. In most states, a proper budget approach will require a combination of increasing selected taxes and cutting unneeded spending. Many states have spending which is pure political giveaways to donors that must be stopped.
And if you think the laws of economics do not apply to taxes, and less taxes do not equal more growth, then you have failed econ 101. edit: I would also have to add that you specifically said that you didn't want taxes cut in north carolina because you didn't want any spending cuts in education or infrastructure. So where are your spending cuts going to come from? Education is massively overfunded right now in my opinion.
Did you sleep through the entire taxation section of macroeconomics class? The entire economics theory around taxation is that proper taxation coupled with spending on the proper things (at the state/local level being infrastructure and education) causes the economy to grow. Starving needed services causes the economy to shrink. Hard to ship from your factory when there are no roads built and maintained. Hard to hire a knowledgeable workforce when none of the locals graduated high school. North Carolina ranks 49th in teacher salaries in 2014/15 down from 46th and ranks as the worst state for teachers at 51 (including D.C.). All the surrounding states pay teachers a minimum of $10K more in salary (and yes, teachers are leaving to hop the borders at record rates). North Carolina does not have a teacher union, nor can local school districts vote to raise salaries which are set at the state level. The future of North Carolina depends on a high tech economy based around IT, Pharma, and Finance - many of these employers have come forward and stated N.C. is shooting itself in the foot by not properly funding education and infrastructure. Long term these companies will move where they can hire and educated workforce and have proper infrastructure Worse Than Mississippi: Study Finds NC is America’s Worst State for Teachers http://www.progressncaction.org/new...-nc-is-americas-worst-state-for-teachers#skip
No, actually I took masters level econ classes at a top ten public university and did ok in the them. Oh, and worked partly in taxation for a cpa firm right out of college, too. How's them credentials? You say you want spending cuts, but you can't seem to find anything to cut. Hmm. And is an article written in something called progress? supposed to influence my opinion of education? Progressives think that men humping each other is normal. I don't. Do charter teachers make large amounts of money for teaching kids? The kids in those schools do pretty well academically. Funding the teachers unions and expecting higher student achievement is like changing tax rates and expecting there to be no change in the way people or businesses conduct their investments or time their incomes or decide where to locate. It's just not the way things work in the real world. It only works like that in the imaginations of liberal academics who are paid for their spin. North Carolina public school teachers can move to Mississippi if they want. I don't care. And I don't think it will make a whit of difference in sat scores.
Let's look at this from a free market perspective. If all of your best employees are fleeing your company in record numbers because all the nearby companies pay more then most corporate executives would agree that you have a compensation problem. Teaching is also a free market. The best and brightest teachers will go to the states that pay them the best. If all of your best teachers are fleeing your state because all the nearby states pay more then most reasonable people would agree that you have a compensation problem. I can point to plenty of political boondoggles that can be cut in North Carolina, but we should be properly funding our schools and infrastructure if the state wants to remain competitive. "Starve the beast" is actually code for "Kill your economy".
Funny how you are certain that teachers compensation leads to changes in behavior but then go on to say in other posts that tax rate changes will not effect productivity or economic growth. Why were you asking me if I slept through econ class?
I am extremely dubious of some of the statistics you toss around. I am not aware of some crisis in attracting teachers to NC public schoiols. I am sure there are leftwing groups that want to pretend there is, but I would point to other issues as the cause for teachers leaving. First and foremost is school discipline. I haver personal knowledge of dedicated teachers giving up on the profession because schools would not enforce classroom discipline. We all know the problem. Schools do not want to attract attention by suspending black thugs, so they let them ruin the learning environment for the rest of the class and make the teacher's job unbearable. Teachers in high schools have legitimate fears for their safety. You can't pay people enough to counteract that. Add in the massive invasion of hispanics, most of them illegal, many illiterate and certainly incapable of doing work in english. How do you handle that as a teacher? There are no doubt problems in NC schools but teacher pay is not the most pressing. Given the state's relatively low cost of living and many attractions, plus the slew of graduates from its many universities, there is no reason it should have to pay premium salaries to attract teachers anyway.