James July-August 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 63
high-growth suburban counties.
Rising Cost of Living
Another flashing warning light
• Streamline investment credits that
is the cost of living in Georgia.
incentivize small business formation Metro Atlanta— which was once
and expansion without bureaucratic seen as a more affordable alteroverhead.
native to Dallas or Charlotte— is
seeing prices rise rapidly. Housing
• Maintain spending discipline to
prices have jumped 43 percent
preserve Georgia’s AAA bond rating since 2019, with the median
and fiscal credibility.
home price now hovering around
$410,000. Rent growth has also
• Consider bolstering Georgia’s
outpaced wage growth in major
current incentive toolkit—while
counties, and traffic congestion
the state lacks true tax-free zones,
adds to time and cost burdens for
it does offer freeport exemptions,
working families.
Foreign-Trade Zones, and targeted
If Georgia becomes both
incentive areas. Yet other states
expensive and heavily taxed,
are aggressively scaling these tools we will lose our most important
into statewide economic engines,
competitive advantage: livability.
leaving Georgia’s approach comThe threat is not just losing large
paratively restrained.
corporations or wealthy retirees.
It’s losing the next generation of
Georgia’s policymakers must
families, skilled workers, and small
balance ambition with prudence.
business owners who fuel the
But standing still is not prudence.
state’s future.
It’s surrender.
The Clock is Accelerating
Other Southern states aren’t
waiting. They are positioning
themselves for the next 20 years of
growth. If Georgia doesn’t match
that urgency, we’ll look back and
realize we allowed complacency to
erode decades of smart policy.
The next three to five years will
define Georgia’s economic trajectory. Corporate site selection is fluid.
Capital is mobile. Talent is on the
move. Every legislative session we
wait is another year our competitors widen the gap.
Georgia has every tool needed
to become the undisputed economic powerhouse of the Southeast.
But only if our leadership responds
with urgency, clarity, and the courage to move faster than the status
quo allows.
Chadwick Hagan is the founder of Hagan Capital
Group, a private fund and corporate finance advisor
in Atlanta.
J U LY /AU GUST 2025
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