Brother Can You Spare Me $16.35? -Connecticut's Yet Even Higher Minimum Wage

Can you spare me $16.35? If you are one of the individuals who are working in Connecticut and receiving minimum wage, you received an hourly wage increase from $15.69 to $16.35 on January 1, 2025. This is an increase of sixty-six cents per hour or an increase of roughly 4%. I am sure that if you receive such an increase, you will not feel any more financially empowered than you did at the moment before you received it, but please have no concerns as the people making this law change hold you in the same minimal regard as they did before the increase was signed into law.

Currently the state's minimum wage is the fifth highest in the country. In addition, Connecticut's cost of living is one of the highest in the country, and it is fast coming to the point where even long-time state-aggrandizing publications and organizations can no longer hide the wretched economic damage taking place. With respect to the minimum wage, the state wage ratings are found in a recent report issued by the state- CBIA (https://www.cbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/EAP_CBIA-Foundation_0824.pdf) This very same report ranked Connecticut as the ninth highest cost of living state in the country. This very same report also stated that Connecticut is ranked 47th as one of the worst states in the country in the Business Tax Climate analysis. But let’s not stop there! A fail-safe indicator of positive economic activity is moving van rentals! Here, Connecticut does not disappoint as one of the leading move-out states in another report from the state-supportive Hartford Business Journal. https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/ct-remains-in-bottom-10-of-u-haul-growth-index-in-2024?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Developer%20to%20buy%20downtown%20Waterbury%20building%20for%20apt%20%20conversion%20%7C%20Hospital%20fined%20%24153K%20for%20terminating%20labor%2C%20delivery%20services&utm_campaign=HBJ%20Today%20010225. Suffice it to say that when even the most loyal business bulwarks can no longer hide the effects of excessive state mandated regulations, public sector inefficiency, high taxes, and a needlessly difficult state tax system, it’s evident that the Kingdom of His Royal Con Man, King Ned Lamont The Unaccountable, is deeply in trouble.

But let us return to that poor wage worker we spoke about earlier. Can one live on a minimum wage job of 40 hours a week at $16.35 an hour? How could they, given Connecticut’s excessively high taxes, excessively high housing/rent prices, excessively high electric rates, excessively high transportation/driving costs and excessively high food costs made even higher by patently idiotic energy policies? Your minimum wage job paying the royal sum of net $654 will not go far in the state. Could there possibly be a direct correlation between high state minimum wages and high costs of living? Regardless of the pandering of Connecticut Demo-Communist state legislators who prattle on about higher minimum wages resulting in greater economic prosperity, it never dawns on these taxpayer-dependent souls that those paying these high minimum wages and the consumers who purchase products, goods and or services from these unduly burdened businesses are now forced to pay higher prices across the board.  

And it is a cycle without end. Since economically failing states like Connecticut do their best to nurture a permanently dependent underclass, these businesses must continue to pay even higher wages for decent workers since states like Connecticut place a greater premium on those who are economically nonproductive but politically valuable to ensure political power. But if a Connecticut business is silly enough to continue in operation, it must increase costs to survive since it is in business to make a profit, contrary to what the Connecticut Democrat Party may think. And the workers who the Demo-Communist legislators claim to benefit from the minimum wage increase are now seeing their job options becoming more limited as struggling businesses are turning to robotics, artificial intelligence, and self-service cashiers to help save money. Or, the goods and intellectual capital of productive and valuable business people are in transport in one of those coveted moving vans headed out of state. The real world understands that money is always finite and must be earned and regenerated. And what dumb politicians often fail to realize is that the most powerful voting landslides are made by one's feet. So, if you are a lower-wage worker now confronted with job loss, please do not hesitate to thank Connecticut Demo-Communist legislators who destroyed the economy while claiming to save it.

However, if you are a purposed state Democrat and you want to come full circle in destroying the state economy, why stop with just forced wage increases? Because by now, you have learned the value of handing out “free money” in exchange for instilling fear and defeat and exerting Communistic control upon the masses. The Covid-19 pandemic was a new Gold Standard in “re-imagining” the role of government fostering non productivity by the draconian shutting down of the economy. Businesses collapsed and jobs were forever lost. During this time, many workers decided it was more economically advantageous to stay home and receive handouts from the government rather than go back to work, while an extremely valuable older generation of workers decided that they had enough of the bureaucracy upon the businesses and government decrees and either retired or rented one of the moving vans spoken of earlier to head out of state. Regrettably, the painful reality of what is wrong with the Connecticut economy is simply and brutally evident for those who are willing to see.

In closing, Connecticut should be doing everything it can to make it easier for businesses to operate in the state in 2025. instead, this new legislative session that is upon us will be the same festival of twisted and delusional rhetoric that has been heard for decades.  We will see the usual statements that higher taxes, more regulations, more state run redundancy, more program spending, higher wages and benefits for state taxpayer funded union employees, weak GOP push back, and more failed economic promises will all work to keep Connecticut at the bottom of all economic categories while keeping it at one of the highest taxed states in the country.  Moreover, always be sure to thank your Demo-Communist legislature when you check out at a local fast-food restaurant and your eyes explode at the price of the meal. And please send your state representative a thank you card after waiting in an excessively long store line waiting for a self-service kiosk to open since no more cashiers work in the grocery store anymore. Or send these dear elected official a Christmas card after you spend three hours on the phone to get a plumber to come to your house to fix a water leak. Our economy should be flourishing and vibrant for all people of any color and creed, and not just the ruling self-interested political elite who continue their destruction of both businesses and their workers in their Brave New Failed Democrat Economy they have built for decades. 

Removal of the dysfunctional, redundant, and inept characters that have played an economically poisonous game of musical chairs must quickly happen in Connecticut. The future of the state depends upon it.