south carolina Mug

A State that is nice to visit, but not a place one would want to live in. Let me go over the good aspects first. The beaches are nice. Myrtle can get crowded so go in the off-season if you can. Charleston and Hilton Head are better destinations. Charleston also has some great museums and historical sites. They have lots of outlet malls near Myrtle Beach where you can get some great deals if you shop around. Generally, the gas prices there tend to be lower. South Carolina also has some good golfing. Kiawah Island and Hilton Head have award-winning golf courses. Now for the reasons not to live here. First, the taxes are high, and getting worse. The sales tax recently increased to 6%, you pay State income tax, property taxes (which are also on an upward spiral), and taxes on your automobile. On top of this there are people in the State government who want to add on a full sales tax to car sales, in addition to the annual property tax. To make a long story short, you pay almost European level taxes when you add in Federal, but get little in the way of government services. In South Carolina the schools are terrible so prepare to send your kids to a private school. Good luck paying for it though after they milk you on property taxes to pay for a system that they mismanage. They don't maintain the roads as they are infested with potholes and litter. I used to live in Turkey, which is still considered a second-world country, and we had a better maintained infrastructure. It is truly a pathetic place once you drive 10 miles inland from any coast. The people in South Carolina shoot themselves in the foot at every election by voting in people who continue to screw them. It is for this reason that I think they have no intention whatsoever of fixing the schools. They use the lottery money to send kids to college who didn't even recieve a proper education in high school, and are therefore not prepared to survive college. As some on here have said, they consider it to be full of rednecks and this would be a true statement. South Carolina has one of the highest incarceration rates, highest poverty rates, highest rate of high-school dropouts, highest rates of sexual diseases and lowest SAT scores. The real estate prices are high in many areas, but wage levels are a joke. Be prepared to get into a lot of debt to live here. Bottom line...don't live here. If you have plans on moving here please reconsider. These people have their priorities way out of order and if you plan on getting something done right you need to be willing to do it for yourself. If you live up north and you're tired of the cold, go to North Carolina or Florida. Oh yeah, and the people here can't drive. That's why your insurance rates are high folks. You think the insurance industry is corrupt and to blame? If the insurance industry ran the State then the truck drivers wouldn't be able to get by with allowing rocks and junk to fall into the road. If you don't believe me then drive along I-26 between College Park and Ashley Phosphate on any weekday morning and see how many rock chips you get. When your windshield needs to be replaced they have to pay 100%. And insurance companies don't like this, so the reason your rates are high is because you don't know how to drive safely. Learn what a turn signal is for. Learn that tailgating leads to accidents. Stop driving on city streets like there's some kind of trophy waiting for you at your home. I turn on the radio on my way home, it's a clear day, little wind, the streets are dry, and I hear about five to six accidents. Learn how to drive!