[hartford_renter]

Originally Posted by FILF

How much lower can Malloy take us???

http://www.yankeeinstitute.org/2013/...ut-ranks-46th/

Deeper and deeper into debt

Malloy wants to increase spending 10% over the next 2 years

We have no money and the democrats want to give more away to the lower classes

[Angelic_Avalon]

I found this interesting what this person said from another forum and makes a lot of sense. The feds should pay off debts for states like Connecticut.

our government honestly has little to do with it. it has influence, but this is an issue build over the last 200 years.

change just one tiny detail....
State pensions...and the culture surrounding state/city pensions and we got a change..
problem is that we started diging that hole long long ago.

Union pensions are an extension of this.. but I digress.

other than this detail our woes are largely the result of location, size and national demographic shifting.

CT is small, much like Rhode island and therefore cannot pool enough resources to properly build infrastructure around a single strength.

think of Minneapolis as a correlary... Huge state, huge area, one city to focus infrastructure on. so, the airport is great, and all sports focus is on Minneapolis, so they invest in it. all highways lead there and ultimately the state serves the needs of the city so the city can serve the needs of the state.

for these reasons, everyone is on the same page.. everyone.

because Minneapolis is strong, the state is strong. rural areas benefit from summer camps, and from winter get aways. the satate has more money to spend on rural education etc, and there is a transportation network to serve everyone.




here in CT, we are ADD, our roads server everywhere and nowhere at the same time. we are New York, we are New England, we are tri-state, we are Boston, we are the shore, we are the gateway to new england, we are fairfield county, we are so damn unfocused its staggering.

and since we are small we dont have the same federal resources focused in one spot.

I ask this too...

what would CT be like if we got 100% of our federal taxes back every year in federal funding? and for the last 100 years?

I suspect we would have amazing mass transit and fully funded pensions and less debt and alot of things.


Let me make this even more black and white ugly!

Using 2007 numbers , CT gave the feds 54 Billion and received 32 Billion back.

thats a 22 Billion loss!!!

the % for 2007 was 59.69% by my math

based on the the Heartland institute, the numbers for 1998 were 69% and for 1988 were 79% (not sure what that website is but this was an easy data find.)

so, if we have been losing out on between 10-22 Billion over the last 25 years, its fairly reasonable to assume that the state is short some 250 Billion to 500 Billion

Connecticut has a total state debt of something like 42 Billion....
gee, I wonder why?


2 years could pay that off.

I obviously am aware that this is not a $1 for $1 cash propisition, and that much of that spending might be focused on say the national labs in New Mexico or supporting Naval operations in Virginia.

but the lack of parity is egregious.

I say, we ask the feds to kindly pay off all our debt, and build us a nice mass transit system based around Hartford, but connected regionally to NYC/Boston... then we will call not even steven.

[NYisontop]

I think St. Paul would argue against all the attention going to Minneapolis, which hasn't been nicknamed the "Only Child City" in quite some time, but I kid :-)

I wouldn't put much stock into a study by ALEC, and pro-business/pro-growth are Pavlovian keywords for lower taxes. Connecticut's core issues include its pension legacy and infrastructure costs, and that the manufacturers of yesterday (on which the system was built) left for overseas or under-developed states where they could package dream development deals and avoid taxes without the legacy and infrastructure costs. It's the same issue across New England, the Northeast, the Rust Belt and California. I'm sure ALEC ranks North Dakota, Utah, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and other strongly conservative states highly - but that's everything to do with new massive and sprawling urban centers and unchecked growth, or resource extraction, neither of which Connecticut or the rest of this part of the country have the ability to emulate.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by Angelic_Avalon

I found this interesting what this person said from another forum and makes a lot of sense. The feds should pay off debts for states like Connecticut.

I don't know that I agree with the example you give. I seem to remember that Minnesota is struggling with crumbling infrastructure as well. Just a couple of years ago a major bridge on a major highway collapsed during rush hour. Not exactly what I would call the best. Jay

[hartford_renter]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I don't know that I agree with the example you give. I seem to remember that Minnesota is struggling with crumbling infrastructure as well. Just a couple of years ago a major bridge on a major highway collapsed during rush hour. Not exactly what I would call the best. Jay

I wouldn't draw conclusions from a single bridge collapse Jay.

Note the CT gas tax was supposed to go to fixing our own infrastructure but guess what, it's going to fund the 10% increase in state spending.

We aren't repairing bridges because the Governor keeps hiring more state workers and giving away more taxpayer money to the public sector.

What we have here is a massive transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public, it isn't efficient and our economy is dead last as a result.

[basehead617]

Originally Posted by hartford_renter

What we have here is a massive transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public, it isn't efficient and our economy is dead last as a result.

You know, a huge amount of public spending goes to fund projects bid on by the private sector - especially in the realm of infrastructure.

[hartford_renter]

Originally Posted by basehead617

You know, a huge amount of public spending goes to fund projects bid on by the private sector - especially in the realm of infrastructure.

One reason why government projects cost so much more than private ones is that they are required to hire companies that have unions or companies with minority owners.

You may be glad that Malloy gets to take all the tax dollars and spend them on projects that HE sees fit to spend them on.

Rational people realize that this is the wrong way to spend money. The public sector exists on private sector tax money. Lets not forget this. Its a total disaster you were warned.