Skip to main content

More Business Flight


MetLife has recently announced it plans to move 2,600 jobs to North Carolina. The company has not yet announced how many jobs will be lost in Bloomfield, but it has announced that it will close its offices in Lowell, Mass., Somerset, N.J., and Aliso Viejo, Calif. It will reduce its workforce in Bloomfield, Boston, Irvine, Calif., Johnstown, Pa., and Warwick, R.I. What’s it all mean? A company spokesman has said that MetLife is trying to save money by consolidating operations.
Why North Carolina rather than, say, Bridgeport Connecticut?

Someone at MetLife knows how to add and subtract. According to a recent report, Bridgeport Connecticut is the highest taxed city in the country, another “first’ for a state that is third highest in its tax burden. South Carolina’s tax structure places it as number 10 among states with the lowest tax burden. Connecticut residents pay 12.3% of their income in taxes compared with 8.4% in South Carolina. One must assume that the bean counters have done their work and concluded that it would be more profitable to move operations to South Carolina.

While it may be possible possible that the governor of South Carolina made the company an offer it could not refuse, the more important consideration is: Why isn’t the Northeast able to meet offers made in the South?

The cost of labor is higher in the Northeast, and the governing ethic in the South, far less aggressive, is more amenable to the entrepreneurial spirit.  Under the progressive administration of Governor Dannel Malloy and a Democratic dominated General Assembly, Connecticut only recently instituted the largest tax increase in state history, and the state still can’t balance its books. Mr. Malloy apparently thought he was in competition with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; so long as he maintained lower governmental costs than Mr. Christie, Connecticut would not lose jobs in the region. Now South Carolina is poaching Connecticut businesses. What a surprise? 
Labels:

Comments

dmoelling said…
To beat a dead horse, Carolinas commercial electricty rates are around $0.09 per kilowatt/hour while CT are $0.14 per kilowatt/hour.

There are similar differences for health care, housing costs etc.

CT Pols always try to compare us to NY/RI/MA but large companies compete nationwide so this is not accurate.
9:23 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."
17 comments
Read more

PCBs, GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

By Gerald and Natalie Sirkin c2007 A front-page story on PCBs in the March 9 News-Times is just wrong. The first thing to know about PCBs is that they never killed a single person nor did they ever cause cancer. The second is that although they are invariably called “cancer-causing,” that designation comes chiefly from a single rat study. The third thing is that the subject rats were exposed daily for 21 months to 100 parts per million (ppm) of PCBs containing 60% chlorine. (The 100 ppm was about 5,000 times the tolerable daily intake of PCBs set by FDA in 1973.) When rats were exposed to PCBs containing less chlorine, they developed no cancers. The fourth, that when the exposed rats were allowed to live out their lives, they had fewer cancers and lived longer than the unexposed rats. PCBs is a family of chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs contain chlorine ranging from 12% to 70%. They were used in two General Electric plants that manufactured electrical equipmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Taking The Fifth, After Esty

Whether or not U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty will serve the remainder of her term or resign immediately is very much an open question. But, in any case, the battle for Connecticut’s 5 th U.S. Congressional District has begun with a show of unexpected fireworks. For many years, the 5 th District was a toss-up proposition; both Republicans and Democrats have held and surrendered the seat. Geographically the 5 th District touches the border of New York from Connecticut’s northern-most point to Danbury in the southern quadrant and includes much of Litchfield county and parts of Fairfield, Hartford and New Haven counties. Party affiliation is competitive, in round figures, 30 percent Democrat, 25 percent Republican and 45 percent unaffiliated. Over the years, the Democrat Party in Connecticut has moved from the center to the left, but the 5 th District has been a moderate preserve. During the Obama presidential election, Republican moderates within Connecticut's U.S. ...
Post a Comment
Read more