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Coming Home From Coronavirus



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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