Big companies and social events are moving out or not expanding in North Carolina because of the regressive social policies of the state. ** The state's attempts to restrict voting was thrown out by a Court of Appeals on a unanimous vote., and, for just one example, the NBA has cancelled holding their All Star game in Charlotte. They also passed a law at one point that didn't allow seniors to claim medical deductions and then had the Gaul to say they welcomed retirees.*** They discovered the error of their ways, however, and rescinded this law (Medical expenses above 10% of income can be deducted.).
Following is a description of how the ranking were done and a listing of the top 17 states. If you look at the reference, you can see the whole list.
We score all 50 states on more than 60 measures of competitiveness, developed with input from a broad and diverse array of business and policy experts, official government sources, the CNBC Global CFO Council and the states themselves. States receive points based on their rankings in each metric. Then we separate those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighted based on how frequently each is used as a selling point in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves. *
* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/12/americas-top-states-for-business-2016-the-list-and-ranking.html
** https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law/2016/07/29/810b5844-4f72-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/sports/basketball/nba-all-star-game-moves-charlotte-transgender-bathroom-law.html?_r=0
*** http://luminanews.com/2015/10/push-to-restore-medical-expense-deduction-succeeds/
