Joe Scarborough:Look what’s happened to CT since the income tax

It’s flatlined. In a rare moment of candor from Morning Joe cohost Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman tries to explain to his lefty colleagues why raising taxes over and over again is not good for business it’s not good for the economy and it’s not good for creating jobs. And his exhibit a is the state of Connecticut.

This is actually from yesterday’s show but I’m just getting around to posting it now and trust me when I tell you it’s well worth the watch. The subject is whether or not spending cuts or tax increases should be the primary way of reducing the deficit. But Joe, who stunned me with his clarity, makes the case not for tax increases, or even a balanced approach, but for cutting spending. And he uses Connecticut as the prime example, and Lowell Weicker or as exhibit A.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SGVECtrUII

Although it’s a bit of a distraction to this post, I do get a chuckle out of Mika’s comment, why can’t we raise taxes just back to normal levels.

But let’s take a look at the numbers for the state of Connecticut.  From 1981 until 1991 when Connecticut passed its first income tax, jobs grew by over 200,000. After the income tax was passed until today jobs have increased 80,000. That’s 40,000 a decade. That’s definitely flatlined. You can find the figures here.

Now to be fair there are other factors that play into this. We were entering a recession in 1991, which should’ve told Connecticut not to institute an income tax, and of course we’ve had the great recession of 2009. But even in between in what could be called the good times Connecticut’s employment picture grew very little. Check the numbers out for yourself and then ask yourself what it might have looked like had we not had an income tax, remembering of course that the more jobs you create the more revenue, even without an income tax, your state takes in.

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

16 Comments

  1. GdavidH on July 22, 2011 at 5:15 pm

    Normal tax rates??????…….How is that even defined?……By a liberal?

    Does normal equal pre Bush tax cuts, as Mika implies, or pre Reagan @ 70%??



  2. Dimsdale on July 22, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    Don’t you understand??? They need the tax money to bribe the companies to come (or stay) here, to hire the workers whose salaries will be skimmed by the state to get more money to bribe more businesses.
    ?
    Of course, returning CT to a place where businesses would like to do business would work too, but then, how would the politicians be able to show you how important and necessary they are?



  3. sammy22 on July 22, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    I do not believe that CT is the only state in the country with an income tax. So saying “Look what’s happened to CT since the income tax” (and make it sound like that’s the reason for the flat-lining) is a laughable statement.? Let’s see some hypothetical numbers of what the property taxes and sale taxes would be w/o the income tax. CT lawmakers/spenders failed the state on a number of other levels.



    • Dimsdale on July 27, 2011 at 12:46 pm

      The problem with Weicker’s plan is that you left the “property tax standard” of raising income and ADDED the income tax on top of it, which the pols promptly spent and overspent, making the new and ever increasing budget the new norm.? Hopefully, NH is smart enough to avoid this trap, although the occasional lib gets into office and tries to pull a “Weicker”.? It is interesting to note that Texas, with no individual income tax or corporate income tax seems to be doing quite well in comparison to the high income tax states.
      ?
      Ideally, you should have substituted the income tax for the ridiculous property tax rates, or a highly moderated one.?? So now you have high property taxes AND an increasing income tax.? I somehow doubt that the property tax alone, extrapolated to today, would be any more than the deal you have now, but knowing pols (particularly Dems) it very well might.
      ?
      That being said, if you knew the property tax rate I pay in MA, you would just cry out of envy.



  4. Shared Sacrifice on July 22, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    I think Mika lives in CT?? Probably in one of those low mill rate areas like Lyme or New Canaan where she might pay less taxes for a million dollar home & new Mercedes than you’d pay for a $300K home and a VW in a more modest locale with more graffiti and less beachfront vistas with topiary gardens…?? Maybe we should tax the rich- it might change the tune of some of these folks if they’ve got to downsize and start living like the hoi polloi.



  5. joe_m on July 23, 2011 at 7:23 am

    Where have you been living, people?

    I left the high tax state of NY to come to CT where there was a lower property tax and no income tax. Not any more. With the income tax came ever increasing state SPENDING.

    We now have the highest per capita deficit in the country. And we supposedly have a balanced budget law.

    When you let the politicians steal YOUR money, they waste it and they waste it big.

    Will you never learn?



    • Sad4CT on July 23, 2011 at 9:04 am

      I remember when Weicker was running he said that implementing an income tax in CT when we were in a recession was like throwing gasoline on a fire…? He said it shouldn’t be done.? That position made a lot of people vote for him…? What happened right after he got elected?? CT got an income tax.? Of course, it was only supposed to be temporary…? but in the land of politics, temporary seems to mean forever.



    • ricbee on July 23, 2011 at 2:59 pm

      ?Somebody,maybe that State Senator that started the tax protest,said<“Weicker hates CT for voting him out of the Senate”. He lied about everything & he even made a deal with the Indians when he said he wouldn’t. He meant to destroy Corrupticut & is still gloating that he did.



    • NH-Jim on July 25, 2011 at 1:20 pm

      Let us also remember that the CT state income tax was NOT a popular solution.? It passed by ONE vote and lost repeal by ONE vote in a Democrat-controlled legislature.? Tom Scott railed against and rallied a protest of ten’s of thousands outside the capital that, to this day, has not been trumped.? This tax law included the expiration date of 6 years; it is 2011, twenty years later, and we still have this regressive tax.? And, now Malloy and his minions in the state legislature have voted and passed to INCREASE it!
      ?
      Answer this for me, please:? why should I stay in this state after 47 years; keep my business in this state; continue to pay more for less in this state?
      ?
      I want some convincing…..



  6. Lynn on July 23, 2011 at 8:05 am

    Mika looked like a cobra getting ready to strike out at Joe. When she did, it was her typically progressive nonsense. It’s about time Joe finally made sense. Why can’t Liberals take off their rose-colored glasses and just look at the statistics. They are there on the CGA.com website, which by the way, Sammy is Connecticut General Assembly, hardly a pro conservative, right-wing website.



  7. Lazybum on July 23, 2011 at 9:25 am

    If Joe keeps this up, Mika may stop always looking like she wants to hump Joe’s leg.



  8. ricbee on July 23, 2011 at 3:01 pm

    ?I don’t watch TV,Jim gives me more news then I ever wanted.



  9. Eric on July 24, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    Miks’s kind of a moron. ?I was going to say something about ‘blondes’ but I know so many intelligent blonde haired women that a crack like that would be totally over the top. ?I guess stupidity is genetic to a liberal though, as they rarely know what they’re talking about when their lips are moving. ??



  10. Plainvillian on July 24, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    Lowell Weicker is as much a villain to Corrupticut as LBJ is to the US.? Both were vile liars and contemptible ego maniacs who left fiscal carnage in their wake.
    Before Weicker Connecticut had a thriving business climate and was an attractive place to live and work.? For over two decades, the state legislature has been dominated by liberal Democrats whose taxing and regulatory policies have driven business growth here to distant memory status.? Now we have a Democrat Governor pledging to double down on every socialist agenda item to the applause and encouragement of every union and elitist Liberal to be found.
    Every action has consequences.? There is already a significant out-migration of businesses and people from Corrupticut and we lost one congresscritter due to 2000 census redistribution.? There is no evidence? the trend is reversing.
    Corrupticut’s legsicritters might contemplate this exit question:? With the majority of the nation electing more conservative representatives, how will a smaller and more liberal state be rewarded when Federal dollars are distributed by a Tea Party influenced Congress??



  11. yeah on July 25, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    You guys should have seen the audience squirm at last year’s grad ceremony at CCSU.? They had Weiker there (dear lord, why?) to give the “commencement speech”…err, well, at the very least it was a podium for him to bash Bush, crab about the illegal Iraq war, and then tell us all how great of a job he did when in office and how he made “the really tough choice” to implement an income tax!
    ?
    How is simply raising taxes not seen for what it is – *THE* EASY WAY, hands down.? dont address the budget, simply steal more money from your constituents to pay for your laziness!!!
    ?
    It was all I could do not to let out a huge? BULLSSHHHHH sneeze and get up and walk out, but I kept my trap shut out of respect for my girlfriend and her parents who were sitting flabbergasted next to me, wondering just who the hell was this man talking all of this nonsense!? (they’re from out of state…)



  12. ricbee on July 25, 2011 at 11:11 pm

    Weicker is still acting like he still hates poor old Corrupticut.



Mika and Joe

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