AZ 12th best state for business

by David Safier
CNBC has its 2008 rankings of states for businesses. Arizona comes in number 12 overall.

How do our neighboring states rank? Texas is number 1, and Utah is number 3. New Mexico is at 38, and Nevada is way, way down at 45.

Arizona, then, ranks pretty well, despite the howlings of the Rs that our business taxes are driving companies away.

Let's see how we can improve our rankings.

Our lowest ranking is in Education, at 43rd. Bring that up a dozen notches by funding education better, and we should look a whole lot more attractive to businesses. Our Quality of Life is 36th. I don't know how we can fix that, because I don't know how it's measured. Cost of living is 35th, which means we're 15th highest in the nation, something I find surprising. I'm guessing it has to do with the cost of housing. And we're 23rd in Cost of Business, which sounds like a serious negative, except that Number 1 Texas is 27th in Cost of Business. Clearly, that parameter isn't the be-all and end-all of business friendliness.

Our high rankings are in Workforce and Business Friendliness, where we're 6th. (Number 1 Texas is 12th in Workforce and 20th in Business Friendliness. Go figure.) If we're business friendly, I don't see how we can have hostile tax rates. I'll leave that for the Rs to explain, since it's their issue.

We're 8th in Economy, whatever that means, and 19th in Technology and Innovation, something that could slip if we underfund our universities, which could result in our losing our top faculty and the grants they bring in. Our higher education system is the driver of our technological ranking. Gut them and we become far less business friendly.

Like all rankings, this one is quirky and not to be taken all too seriously. But it's hard to see, based on these rankings, how cutting money to K-12 education and the universities in the interest of trimming business taxes will make companies beat a path to our state.