When Connecticut finally does come home again from the business dislocations associated with Coronavirus, what will home look like?
Red
Jahnke, a columnist and founder
of The Red Line, tackles the question, and the answer is not soothing. The
state’s unemployment figures place it, once again, first in the business of
being last.
Connecticut’s
workforce, we are told “has shrunk by about 160,000, or 8.2%, from its
pre-pandemic level of 1.93 million in February 2020, the worst decline in the nation. Only three
other states have experienced drops of more than 5%, and Connecticut has
achieved yet another first in being last. About 7.9% of Connecticut’s workforce
is unemployed, the
highest unemployment rate of the 50 states. Of the pre-pandemic workforce, “300,000 people
or 15.5%... have dropped out or are currently unemployed. The next worst level
is 10.9% in Hawaii.”
Despite these
alarming figures, politicians in the state appear to be doing little to
retrieve from the catch basin of state and federal grants, plentiful now that
the Biden administration has entered a period of inflationary spending, laborers necessary to revitalize stricken businesses.
“Why would anyone
pass up free money, i.e. unemployment benefits without any strings attached?”
Jahnke asks. “Unemployment benefits eligibility during COVID was expanded to
cover so-called ‘gig workers,’ i.e. the self-employed and independent
contractors, so virtually everyone could receive benefits simply by filling out
forms. Why would anyone pass up rich benefits that include the
super-generous federal supplement of $300 weekly ($15,600 per year) on top of
normal benefits?”
Jahnke remarks that, despite the depressing figures – a prefiguration, really, of Connecticut in a post-Coronavirus universe -- “the Democrats who control the state seem clueless. Governor Lamont was mum about yesterday’s report of just 3,500 jobs gained in June. The gains occurred entirely in the public sector. Private sector jobs declined.”
We may expect
such gains among unionized public workers to increase still further
after Lamont has finished negotiating a salary and benefits package with SEBAC.
Former Governor Dannel Malloy’s deal with SEBAC produced temporary savings,
elapsing after three years, and long-term salary and benefit increases that bound
the incoming Lamont administration with hoops of contractual steel. When
incoming Governor Lamont sought to achieve minimal savings, he was told by union
leaders to take a hike. SEBAC had signed long-term contracts, enforceable by courts,
with the Malloy administration. The contracts, naturally, relieved the Democrat
dominated General Assembly from passing restorative legislation to reduce taxpayer contributions to union slush funds.
Connecticut was not
able to control its costs before Coronavirus and, because progressives now
command the heights of political power in the state, it may be less able to
control its costs after Coronavirus – unless the ruling party is willing, for
the sake of the economic health of Connecticut, to accept a course correction
and cut long-term labor costs.
Any woke citizen
knows that the cost of government increases in tandem with tax increases; the
more you get, the more you spend, which is to say the more you give to
political organizations, unions among them, that help hoist you into office.
Connecticut’s last pre-income tax budget under Democrat Governor William
O’Neill was $7.5 billion; the state’s current biennial budget is $40.3 billion.
General Assembly
decision makers have not been watching the general store and, as we all know,
the Democrat controlled General Assembly rented out its oversight powers during
the Coronavirus crisis to “King Ned” who, under emergency powers, proceeded to
button up most of Connecticut businesses, putting a crimp in state revenues that,
progressives in Connecticut’s government suggest, may now be recovered through
additional taxes on the rich and corporations struggling to breathe underwater.
Lamont and the enabling Democrat dominated General Assembly should bone up on Shakespeare. Those who have no clue sleep soundly. Perhaps a page from Shakespeare might awaken them, though it is always best for politicians of any stripe to avoid Shakespeare, who pricks awake the slumbering conscience. King Henry IV is wondering why a “wet boy” on a ship’s mast watch is able to sleep soundly during a fierce storm at sea, while a king’s troubled sleep “in the calmest and most stillest night” is tempest tossed – “Then happy low, lie down!/ Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
But, of course, we
sons and daughters of revolution, low subjects of the king and the king’s
retinue, do not always obligingly lie down. Mini-revolutions are springing up
all around the state. And we can be certain that the last people to take note
of them approvingly will be the powers that be and the governing elite’s “wet
boys.”
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