A recession, as everyone knows, is a business slowdown
accompanied by predictable after effects: unemployment, an increase in welfare
rolls, a reduction in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a consequent reduction in national
and state revenues, and political caterwauling among politicians jockeying for political
position. Recessions in Connecticut have been extraordinarily long-lived. It
takes the state about ten years to recover from recessions. Connecticut has yet
to recover total jobs lost from the most recent recession, which ended
elsewhere in the country in June 2009.
“Hartford County’s economy,” HBJ reports, “is projected to
experience an 18.3% contraction in the second quarter, equivalent to a
$3.9-billion economic loss, StratoDem Analytics data shows.
“Only Fairfield County, the epicenter of the state’s
pandemic, is expected to fare worse with a $5.3 billion, or 24.2% GDP
contraction.”
The Coronavirus recession is an historical first, the nation’s first intentional, politically induced recession. There seems to be near-universal agreement on the question whether the extraordinary business shutdown was necessary to protect the general public from a prolonged Coronavirus infestation. Both President Donald Trump and The Resistance, which has not yet been successful in impeaching the President, seem to agree that a politically induced recession is necessary, though there remain some differences in opinion as to whether the recessionary cure will be worse than the Coronavirus disease.
New York, ill prepared for the arrival of Coronavirus, has
been especially hard hit. Persistent critic of the President Senator Chuck Schumer recently has called
upon Trump to “to designate a senior military officer as ‘czar’ with broad and
government-wide authority [i.e. extra-legal authority] to lead both production
and distribution of desperately needed medical equipment NOW.” Schumer
apparently feels no need to explain why czar-like chief executives – i.e. the president nationally
and a host of governors, all of whom are vested with legal and constitutional authority
– have need of additional czars.
In some quarters, Schumer’s demand would be considered a
move to nationalize a sector of American industry that has not yet been closed
down by federal and state edicts. No doubt heavy-breathing socialists like
Democrat Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whose campaign is now in sleep
mode, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the
former barkeep U.S. Representative for New York's 14th Congressional District,
would appreciate the gesture as a validation of their own quasi-socialist ambitions.
As of this writing, New York is showing a decline in the number of deaths
reported from Coronavirus, but calls for the socialization of America’s antique
free market system of commerce appears to be deathless and mounting within the nation’s
progressive community.
The “new normal” – people working from home or not working
at all – invites a question at the back of everyone’s mind: “How long will the Connecticut economy be
under literal and figurative quarantine, and what will be the long-term impact?”
Governor Ned Lamont appears to have extended Connecticut’s business shutdown
until the end of May. How, exactly, do governments
unwind government caused recessions? When and how will the unwinding begin? Will it begin too late? And
can Connecticut, a high tax state chronically in debt, recover quickly, or at
all, from an extended politically induced business shutdown? Nothing recently said by
leading Democrat politicians in the state – who, we all know, have for decades controlled
political decision making in Connecticut– indicates that state Democrat leaders
have given other than a passing thought to the quite predictable after-effects
of our artificially induced recession.
The HBJ editorial addresses these questions obliquely. The
publication notes, “a recent online survey conducted by the Department of
Economic and Community Development and AdvanceCT found that nearly 60% of
Connecticut businesses have either reduced their capacity or closed due to the
ongoing pandemic, and about 82% expect to see a revenue decrease… None of that data
points to a quick recovery.”
Then too, there are problems unique to Connecticut.
Connecticut enters 2020 “in a weaker economic position than the rest of the
country, having shed 3,300 jobs in 2019, while personal income grew at a slower
pace (3.2%) than all but two states.” The publication recommends planning and
forecasting conservatively and aggressively, and passing the tin cup to
Washington DC, hunkering over a national debt presently cresting at about $24
trillion.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a silver
lining in any of these economic storm clouds.
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