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Your area does have a high COL, also. Most coastal metros are disproportionately high. That is not a strength, btw.
You’re right - but where I live doesn’t have a lot of the taxes experienced in CT, like car tax, income tax, etc. High insurance costs is a much easier pill to swallow.
You’re right - but where I live doesn’t have a lot of the taxes experienced in CT, like car tax, income tax, etc. High insurance costs is a much easier pill to swallow.
I think the tax foundation methodology is the best, as it is done every year. I also abhor even being amongst the top 40% of taxed states.
We are a very high tax state at ALL wage levels. At $40k gross, $19.23/hour, a single person pays $1,550/year in state income tax, $30/wk. (source via link below) That is absurdly high. They will also pay automobile property taxes, gas taxes, and sales taxes. Plus all federal taxes. I have no idea how the folks making that get by in Ct. Yet it is less than 1.5 times our new minimum wage, and they pay what amounts to around 3 weeks of net pay to Ct due to Weicker and those who followed him.
We also need to stop rationalizing our high taxes by comparing ourselves just to NY and NJ, which are seeing large amounts of the wealthy flee, as to think if we are a smidge lower than just those two makes all well is absurd. We must become competitive against all states in controlling our cost structure. Just as companies think-not regionally, but as needing to be better than all in their field. Comparing Ct to just NY & NJ is like saying a 4th place baseball team is fine, as there is one team lower in the standings. I'd like to see us compare ourselves to our regions most successful state economically the last decade-Massachusetts.
I’m not sure how anyone can think The Tax Foundation methodology is best when it’s been proven flawed and has been changed. That doesn’t give it much credibility, especially since they have a very well known agenda.
I think the Moneywise.com analysis is much more realistic. It shows how much middle class people actually have leftover after paying taxes in each state. Certainly eye opening to think our state is actually in the middle of the pack in taxes paid by the middle class. Again it’s due to our state having so many wealthy people skewing the overly simplistic analyses by biased organizations like The Tax Foundation or the Yankee Institute.
I also disagree that we should not compare our state to New York and New Jersey. Why not compare? They are our major neighbors. Their economies are similar to ours and are tied to each other. What we definitely should not do is compare our state to places like Florida and Tennessee. Those are very different from Connecticut in so many ways, yet all the time posters are referencing them and making comparisons. Talk about apples and oranges. Jay
I’m not sure how anyone can think The Tax Foundation methodology is best when it’s been proven flawed and has been changed. That doesn’t give it much credibility, especially since they have a very well known agenda.
I think the Moneywise.com analysis is much more realistic. It shows how much middle class people actually have leftover after paying taxes in each state. Certainly eye opening to think our state is actually in the middle of the pack in taxes paid by the middle class. Again it’s due to our state having so many wealthy people skewing the overly simplistic analyses by biased organizations like The Tax Foundation or the Yankee Institute. Jay
The other thing to be frank is that how exactly is income being defined. Taxes on income that is from labor that is you have an employer issue you a check is much higher than that of capital gains (even with the trump tax cut). The tax advantages to investing and owning a house are huge nationwide. So if someone says they are high income eventually I have to assume that the income is from investments rather than labor. I'm not rich by any means but if you invest for years eventually you'll start to make more on a given day, than week and maybe even month and year in investments.
I'm not against taxes but there has to be some exemptions to a given point. For example sales taxes on groceries and general food make no sense to me. CT doesn't do this but there's a few for some reason that do. Personally I don't think we should have taxes on used goods because if it was already paid and there's depreciation (it's used after all) why pay it again.
Competition for everything is pretty high now. The idea that there's walls up and restrictions and limits just doesn't work. We are more in a service based economy and not product based. Now naturally there's some areas where you can't really compete. Kansas doesn't really compete in ocean front property. You aren't going to find the same height of mountains out east etc. Remember the video of Cleveland..."WE'RE NOT DETROIT". Same thing here. If you constantly compare yourself to a small group and then that group doesn't matter then what? Remember when FiOS came out? People thought it was great as it had all these channels and priced a tad lower than cable. Then what..streaming. Now no one cares about FiOS and cable packages you can just bypass them. Remember when text messaging cost money? Then instant messages came out online and telco's had to switch. Companies changed to own content.
Sometimes places have to compete in different ways. Say with restaurants. How many restaurants in CT have a rooftop deck (I've been to one..pretty nice) how about rooftop pool? I know of a few in Boston. As things become more of a commodity you have to be more accepting and sell more. The reason why I say growth is important is because businesses generally anticipate inflation. In order to fight that you either sell more or raise the price. It's harder to sell more if a population is going down or flat. A cost benefit analysis becomes harder to do when there's less people. Even on a local level this is true. In the Berkshires in Mass there is a plan to make the county under one school district. The area has nearly the same population as hartford but nearly the same land mass as RI. You have to have a population to justify administration. Like CT there's a fair amount of affluent NY'ers that live there but it's often part time and they aren't having kids let alone sending kids to the districts. Eventually what happens is if there's no generation to pass the baton to there's less of a market. Abandoned playgrounds, closing day cares, civic groups for youths (boys and girls club, boys and girl scouts, etc read Bowling Alone). Then it gets into more of actual employees. Labor market shrinks and more automation. Not everyone wants to inherit grandmas furniture so what makes us think they'll want grandmas house?
One of the basic signs of development is positive population growth. A mix of new births, immigration and domestic migration. Otherwise it becomes a homogeneous group of elderly people (usually nimby). I know I know the response is going to be on income levels and people think things are fine. But the fact it is it is not fine. Concentrating the majority of economic growth based on a small group of highly affluent people doesn't help. I'm not to the left at all and I'd actually be for lowering taxes but there has to be some other forms of development in CT, especially eastern CT. Community Preservation Act in mass is one idea. You have a property tax surcharge which is matched with the state. Projects and rates are decided locally. It supports historical buildings, open space, housing and recreation.
We should be asking the chambers of commerce to ask their members what is preventing their members from expanding sales, hiring people, more capital expenditures etc What's preventing growth? More construction permits? More housing permits? Adding ADU"s? Subsidized childcare etc General development can mean sidewalks and more lighting. I've actually seen debates on these things. If grandma can't walk down the street and it's dark that's going to be a worry to her kids etc.
You really make it sound like Connecticut is deeply depressed which couldn’t be further from the truth. Where are there abandoned playgrounds and closed daycares? I will once again point out that we are in the Top 5 in per capita Gross Domestic Product and No. 1 in personal income. If things were as bleak as you paint it, that would not be the case. Jay
We need to compete with 49 states, plus the world, so to compare ourselves to just our severely over costed, neighbors only is like a baseball fan reviewing his favorite team simply by how they do vs last place teams.
Competition is global now, not regional. Unlike perhaps 30 + years ago.
Where are there abandoned playgrounds and daycares? Well as I mentioned if you have no population growth this is more based on the birth rate due to covid and the lack of immigration. If you go years without the birth rate going back up it creates a deficit. On a nationwide level this has happened since 2008. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-the-pandemic/
In stafford we are closing an elementary school. Fewer students means less of a need for schools.
NJ is not a neighbor to CT. NY and MA would be the major neighboring states. Again I've had arguments on this on a local level years ago. They argued that somehow *nothing* could compare to the town. Well I'm sorry but you have to compare it to something at some point otherwise there's no decision making process to become.
GDP and income are irrelevant arguments as the population is not increasing. Businesses leave and then more of the population leaves.
Real GDP (2019 Dollars) in Connecticut
2019 1 Year Change 3 Year Change 5 Year Change
US Per-Capita GDP $65,240 +1.67% +5.93% +9.49%
Connecticut Per-Capita GDP $80,729 +1.25% +1.98% +7.68%
Connecticut Population 3,565,287 -0.17% -0.36% -0.81%
Like you said it's some affluent people skewing the place up. It peaked in 2007 and 2008 is the same level as 2019. Ct had a lost decade. You can brag about it being high relative to other states but the growth per capita clearly is not as high as the national average and in real numbers has shown 10 years of hardly any real growth. But I guess you think this is a bias as well.
Real GDP (2019 Dollars) in Connecticut
2019 1 Year Change 3 Year Change 5 Year Change
US Per-Capita GDP $65,240 +1.67% +5.93% +9.49%
Connecticut Per-Capita GDP $80,729 +1.25% +1.98% +7.68%
Connecticut Population 3,565,287 -0.17% -0.36% -0.81%
Like you said it's some affluent people skewing the place up. It peaked in 2007 and 2008 is the same level as 2019. Ct had a lost decade. You can brag about it being high relative to other states but the growth per capita clearly is not as high as the national average and in real numbers has shown 10 years of hardly any real growth. But I guess you think this is a bias as well.
Excellent data. I always favor using the same value year (2019) and then seeing 23 years as compiled here shows a very clear picture. Thank you very much for taking the time to put this together.
Your point shows clearly of 2007 and 2008 being our best years in Ct per capita GDP , with 2019 being flat to it, while the nation had grown 12% in per capita GDP during the same period of time.
Now high value people IMO do not skew things. When any state loses its top people in terms of net worth, income, etc, it has an enormous, disproportionate affect. That is simply reality, not something that skews reality.
Where are there abandoned playgrounds and daycares? Well as I mentioned if you have no population growth this is more based on the birth rate due to covid and the lack of immigration. If you go years without the birth rate going back up it creates a deficit. On a nationwide level this has happened since 2008. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-the-pandemic/
In stafford we are closing an elementary school. Fewer students means less of a need for schools.
NJ is not a neighbor to CT. NY and MA would be the major neighboring states. Again I've had arguments on this on a local level years ago. They argued that somehow *nothing* could compare to the town. Well I'm sorry but you have to compare it to something at some point otherwise there's no decision making process to become.
GDP and income are irrelevant arguments as the population is not increasing. Businesses leave and then more of the population leaves.
Real GDP (2019 Dollars) in Connecticut
2019 1 Year Change 3 Year Change 5 Year Change
US Per-Capita GDP $65,240 +1.67% +5.93% +9.49%
Connecticut Per-Capita GDP $80,729 +1.25% +1.98% +7.68%
Connecticut Population 3,565,287 -0.17% -0.36% -0.81%
Like you said it's some affluent people skewing the place up. It peaked in 2007 and 2008 is the same level as 2019. Ct had a lost decade. You can brag about it being high relative to other states but the growth per capita clearly is not as high as the national average and in real numbers has shown 10 years of hardly any real growth. But I guess you think this is a bias as well.
What? The data you give says that Connecticut’s Gross Domestic Product per capita was $80,729 in 2019. The US GDP per capita was $65,240. How is that less?
In 2019 Connecticut ranked No. 3 state in per capita GDP. That is a fact and nothing you can say changes or diminishes that. It is very enviable to say the least.
Here is the definition of the word neighbor from dictionary.com:
noun
a person who lives near another.
a person or thing that is near another.
one's fellow human being:
to be generous toward one's less fortunate neighbors.
Since New Jersey is “situated near” Connecticut, it meets the definition of being a “neighbor”.
I’m not sure why you don’t think New Jersey matters. It was mentioned as being comparable to our state. It is a neighboring state and adjacent to New York. Like Connecticut a portion of its economy is tied to New York and also like our state a portion of it falls into the metropolitan New York City statistical region. It certainly is relative to the discussion, especially when it was specifically mentioned by a poster I was responding to.
As for the population comment, again what does it matter? The number of people moving somewhere does not necessarily mean anything. Connecticut is the fourth most densely populated state. Why should we jam even more people within our borders? When does it end? Do we really want to pave over every square inch of our state? I don’t think so. And it’s nothing but personal opinion if low growth is bad.
Finally, the number of children in any town goes up and down often. I’ll point to the Town of Fairfield as an example. Back in the mid 80’s the number of school age kids in town dropped and the town closed a couple elementary schools and one of the two high schools. Well guess what, that changed and within a decade the town had to reopen the high school and one of the elementary schools. In fact, the town is currently spending $23 million adding onto the once closed elementary school because of the increase in kids there. Jay
His point is Ct 2019 is flat to Ct 2008, while the US median 2019 is 17% above US median 2008. Hence we had a lost decade, which is actually a lost 11 years.
If that 11 year pattern repeats both in Ct, and the nation, we will still be at $80.7k median in 2030, while the nation will be at above $76k. (Take 2019 Median/2008 median) now multiply by 2019 median.
I hope we mirror the nation in median income growth going forward vs staying flat as we did the last 11 years.
We are also 7.8% higher in Cost of Living than the nation as a whole.
Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
Ct at left, US total at right.
2019 $65,240 $80,729
2008 $57,524 $80,792
Last edited by Yac; 08-03-2021 at 10:57 PM..
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