A Real Cool Hand
If Connecticut were a movie character is would be Cool Hand Luke.
[Luke wins a game of poker on a bluff]
Dragline: Nothin’. A handful of nothin’…
Luke: Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.
From Cool Hand Luke (1967).
If Connecticut were a movie character is would be Cool Hand Luke.
“Rarely has an important star suffered more, in firm wall-to-wall with physical punishment, psychological cruelty, hopelessness and equal parts sadism and masochism.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, July 10, 2008.
Once proud Connecticut has moved beyond punching bag and straight into national embarrassment territory; it’s no longer cruel, just pitiful.
It seems that almost every day and seemingly everywhere – there appears one of those policy center/research institute studies ranking the states of the US by this, or that, criteria – and I have yet to see one where Connecticut does not rank among the worst – or, at best, smack in mediocre territory.
It really is tiresome. Is anybody paying attention in Hartford?
Here is a dabbling:
In the 2013 Beacon Hill Institute Competitiveness Index Connecticut comes in 27th . The Institute attempts to measure the extent to which each state has policies and conditions that ensure and sustain a high level of per capita income and its continued growth. And I mention here that in a sub-index in the same study – titled the Business Incubator Sub-Index – we come in dead last (yup 50th).
The Kaufman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity measures the monthly business creation rate at the individual owner level, reporting the percentage of non-business-owning adults who start businesses with more than 15 hours per week. In the Kaufman Index 2013 we come in at 28.
In the Tax Foundation’s State 2013 Business Tax Climate Index we come in at 40. The Tax Foundation Index measures a state’s business tax climate; elements that actually impact the competitiveness of the tax system.
Another Tax Foundation study – conducted jointly with KPMG – is Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business. In this report – for 2012 - Connecticut ranks 30.
The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation assembles a different ranking – an especially telling one. The Cost of Government Day is the date of the calendar on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by the government at the federal, state, and local levels. In the latest (2012 ) tally we came in dead last – at 50 (again). The average worker in Connecticut toiled 222 days – all the way to August 9, 2012 to pay for the full cost of government that year.
Here is another one and my favorites as these things go: the Freedom in the 50 Statesrankings assembled by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The following graph displays two key aspects of Connecticut’s economic performance over time.
Specifically, the regulatory policy index gauges the liability system, property rights, health insurance, and the labor market. The fiscal policy index gauges taxes, government employment, spending, debt, and fiscal decentralization. As is painfully evident it has been a precipitous fall across the first decade on both arenas for our constitution state.
I hope whoever takes office in November has something better than a bluff – cause right now – we got nothin’.
Next: Rankings with a grain of salt: are they really telling us what they claim?