Greasing the skids in Connecticut

Unemployment in Connecticut is at a high of 9.1% for May of 2011. that is extraordinary. For most of my life in Connecticut, the economy here was relatively immune to the national business cycles. Sure, there were ups and downs, but the impact was more limited. In Fairfield Country, where I live, this effect was even stronger. The current recession, however, has changed all this. The unemployment rate in Connecticut is not any lower than the national average. We also hear that Connecticut is one of only three states to have fewer jobs now than it had ten years ago.


So what is the response from the state government? What steps is Connecticut taking to make it more competative, to make it a better place to locate jobs? The answer from our new governor Malloy is simple: we are going to raise taxes on the wealthy (by his definition) and increase the general burden on businesses that decide to locate here. Unlike the neighboring states that have held the line on taxes, Connecticut has raised taxes for just about everyone with a job other than those in the very lowest income levels. Malloy calls this increasing the taxes on the rich, but my guess is that well over half the state qualifies as rich under his definition. Sadly, the real burden falls on the middle class alone. A family with an income of half a million dollars will not feel much change if the state taxes on that income go up by half a percent. A family earning 100,000 dollars will feel much more pain when their taxes go up by a full percent. True, the number of dollars paid by the wealthy may nominally be greater, but the impact on the family budget is much more drastic for the middle income folks. Another way to look at this is that Malloy has increased taxes in a way that will decrease spending by the people of the state, thereby hurting local business.

Another Malloy move has been to push for the guaranteed sick leave bill. We will soon have a state law that requires businesses to grant sick leave on a specific schedule. That makes Connecticut the only state to have this requirement. Do they really think that will attract new businesses and employers to CT?