Arguing against a legislatively imposed minimum wage
increase, Brian Jessurun, co-owner of four northeastern Connecticut
restaurants, writes in an op-ed in a Hartford paper: “By all accepted
accounting metrics, this state is virtually bankrupt. Reputable estimates place
Connecticut’s unfunded liability debt at $70,000 per taxpayer, more than many
of them have set aside for their own retirements. The only chance we have of
getting out from under that burden is a burst of prolonged prosperity, which
would increase state revenues without significantly increasing the taxes that
are already driving away job creating businesses and tax paying residents.”
At last, some readers of the paper in which the op-ed
appeared might exclaim – light!
We all know that artificial – read, political -- increases
in the cost of labor are attended by predictable but unwanted consequences.
Whatever the state taxes tends to disappear, and the anti-free market boost in
the minimum wage can only be regarded as a tax on the diminishing earnings of
Jessurun’s businesses.
Very large businesses may be able to absorb such expensive
mandates by passing the increase in the cost of labor to its customers – or
not. There is more than one way, especially for large mobile businesses to slip
the noose, sometimes by moving operations out of state, sometimes by reducing
hours for its full-time staff. When a large company moves out of state, the
business takes with it the taxes it might have surrendered to the state, and
the tax-milking by thirsty, spend-thrift legislators comes to a stop.
Small businesses that cannot move operations will shut down,
thus depriving the state of expected revenues it might have reaped had the
state not imposed an artificial increase in the cost of labor that businesses
could not absorb.
Connecticut has yet to recover the job losses recessions
always bring in its train. While the rest of the nation pulled itself out of
the Great Recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, almost 10
years ago, Connecticut has prolonged its recession by straining an overburdened
economic engine with unsupportable tax increases and needless regulations.
So then, one might suppose that the new Governor of
Connecticut, Ned Lamont, and its General Assembly, top-heavy with Democrats,
nearly half of them progressives, would be loathed to heap taxes and
regulations on a state that is still recovering from a recession that ended
elsewhere in the nation nearly a decade ago.
Not a bit of it. Former Governor Lowell Weicker saddled
Connecticut with an income tax after he had cautioned during his fraudulent
campaign for governor that imposing such a tax in the midst of a recession
would be like “pouring gas on a fire.” The two Republican governors who
followed Weicker, John Rowland and Jodi Rell, were imperfect firewalls unable
to curb the appetite for spending of a Democrat dominated General Assembly.
Governor Dannel Malloy boosted taxes twice and then, as Weicker had done before
him, lit out of town rather than stand for re-election to a third term in
office, after having achieved an approval
rating of 25 percent.
The election of Lamont heralded a new day. He was a business
man who possibly understood the importance of a flourishing economy, a man who
might hasten an epoch of “prolonged prosperity that would, in Jessurun’s words,
“increase state revenues without significantly increasing the taxes that are
already driving away job creating businesses and tax paying residents.”
Here is a PARTIAL list supplied by the Yankee Institute of
additional taxes proposed by Democrat legislators: $652 million in sales tax
increases, which is projected to be up to $1.1 billion by 2022; $515 million
increase in healthcare provider taxes, which are passed on to patients through
higher insurance costs and payments for medical care; $480 million in toll
revenue, 60 percent of $800 million in expected revenue by 2024; $340 million
raised by a new 0.5 percent payroll tax to pay for paid FMLA; $163 million soda
tax; $71.5 million property tax increase by 2022, to pay for teacher
pension payments; $70 million income tax increase, mostly from canceled
exemptions; $50 million corporate tax increase (average of two years),
includes offset for elimination of the Business Entity Tax; $41.6 million in
license and fee increases; $30.2 million plastic bag tax; $17.8
million in other miscellaneous tax increases, including on vaping, a real
estate conveyance tax increase on homes over $800,000, and an increase in the
movie ticket tax; $9 million for the gift tax repeal…
"A fool,” the old adage has it, “learns only from
his own mistakes. A wise
man learns from the mistakes of others."
People inside and outside of Connecticut may be forgiven for
being unable to distinguish whether the new administration is foolish or
stupid.
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