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Connecticut’s Incredible Shrinking Workforce June 26, 2008 Economists and demographers are painting a bleak picture of Connecticut’s future, and much of their concern centers on one question: Who will do the work? Since the early 1990s, no state has lost a greater share of its young-adult population. Couple that with hundreds of thousands of retiring Baby Boomers, and the phrase “crisis situation” isn’t hyperbolic. (Surveys are already showing that many Nutmeg State employers, including hospitals and manufacturers, can’t find enough qualified workers.) But the policies embraced by Connecticut’s elites aren’t solving the worker-shortage problem. They’re making it worse. One of the chief culprits behind their blunders is Richard Florida, a trendy theorist who tells politicians and urban planners everything they want to hear. In Florida’s world, economic growth stems from a region’s “coolness.” Public policy should seek to foster the creation of “vibrant, tolerant places” filled with college students, tech workers, artists, boutique-shop owners, and homosexuals. (Florida has invented ratings systems for how well communities measure up to his vision, including the “Bohemian Index” and “Gay Index.”) Connecticut’s politicians -- never willing to pass on a meme that expands their power -- are dutifully following the Florida formula. Downtown “revitalization” schemes, aimed at creating jobs and nightlife for young hipsters, have been given hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Public “investment” in state-run universities has skyrocketed. Generation X and Y workers can own homes in the ‘burbs, but they need to be built in a “responsible” way. Higher densities are de rigueur. “Green spaces” must be preserved and expanded. (More bicycle paths!) Transit-oriented development, which builds housing close to government-run bus and train lines, also needs subsidies. It all sounds so sensible. Adoption of these policies will surely make Connecticut’s “quality of life” even stronger, and inspire younger generations to stick around. Don’t bet on it. The places that most aggressively adopt “coolness,” “livability,” and “smart growth” blueprints are some of the least economically healthy in the nation. They don’t draw workers, significantly boost investment, or expand their standard of living. According to researcher Joel Kotkin -- Richard Florida’s most eloquent debunker -- America’s “new growth hot-spots,” such as urbanized areas in Utah, Texas, and the Carolinas, aren’t filled with art galleries and oxygen bars. Prosperous regions, Kotkin writes, are usually marked by “single-family homes, churches, satellite dishes, and malls. These are places where households, not singles, dominate the economy. These are cultures attractive to ordinary families.” How best to maintain and expand ordinary households? Making homes more affordable is one way. And scholar Randal O’Toole says micromanaging development decisions isn’t conducive to that goal. O’Toole has calculated a “planning penalty” that measures the “amount in dollars that is added to a median-priced home due to growth-management planning.” Connecticut’s excessive zoning and other land-use controls boost the cost of a home, bigtime. In 2005, the planning penalty was $465,00 in the Stamford area. It was $160,000 in greater Danbury, and $90,000 around Waterbury. “In addition to being much more family friendly places,” writes Kotkin, “today’s growth regions … have different attitudes toward business and enterprising. … [They] are very friendly toward founders and builders of business establishments. In these places, expansion is regarded by citizens, local government, and regional media much more as a good thing than as a source of problems.” That doesn’t sound much like Connecticut. Nutmeggers in their 20s or 30s who start businesses here should undergo a few days of close psychiatric observation. Only New York and California score worse on the Forbes/Pacific Research Institute “Index of Economic Freedom.” Connecticut’s combined local-state-federal tax burden is the highest in the union, and its transportation and energy policies are as unsound and expensive as politicians’ land-use blundering. NIMBYism prevails -- nearly every proposal that poses the slightest change to a neighborhood is opposed by locals. State law lets anyone interfere in the administrative proceedings of any project they think “has, or … is reasonably likely to have, the effect of unreasonably polluting, impairing or destroying the public trust in the air, water or other natural resources of the state.” Connecticut’s “economic development” strategies aren’t low taxes and limited government, but corporate welfare for politically juiced companies and industries. Through overtaxation, regulatory ratcheting, Nanny Statism, and catering to Big Labor and Big Business, Connecticut’s policymakers have created the state’s worker-shortage problem. Now they claim to have effective tools to keep working-age adults from leaving their wildly expensive home state, and perhaps even lure employees from elsewhere. Forgive some of us for being skeptical. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # # |
