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Thinking Dangerously

“Seeking to create more Connecticut jobs, “the lead line ran, “the state Senate voted unanimously Friday night for tax cuts for manufacturers and incentives for movie-production companies.”

The tax cuts for manufacturers and incentives for movie production companies, senators reasoned unanimously, were necessary because businesses in Connecticut are going south – no pun intended – and start struck legislators have realized that the best way to encourage start-up industries is to create a climate in which industries do not feel preyed upon by rapacious state governments.

For Connecticut, this is a revolutionary perception and a significant admission. Practically speaking, it means that the proclivity of our state legislature to tax everything that breaths is, as the film stars might say, a real drag: Less taxes good, more taxes bad.

Economists who graduate from one of our state’s ivory league colleges might put it this way, “Whatever you tax tends to disappear” – including state businesses and millionaires. And unfunded mandates, the labyrinthine regulatory structure favored by local in-the-closet socialists, count as taxes.

So, should we assume that state legislators have had a Damascus Road experience? May we now count them among he converted?

Don’t bet on it.

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