It’s not uncommon during the election cycle for business owners to complain to politicians about cumbersome regulations that sap their time and resources. The Connecticut Department of Labor tried to ease the burden on business owners in 2002 when it launched a new hire reporting website where employers could simply ...
Connecticut is naughty both for energy policy and energy prices. According to the Pacific Research Institute’s most recent 50 State Index of Energy Regulation, Connecticut has a lot of work to do. The state’s regulatory scheme ranks 47 in the country. The Index measures the regulatory burdens placed on consumers and producers of energy by each state, ranking them accordingly.
People suggest, in not quite so many words, that if we don’t have this tax or that spending program or yet another regulation, we’ll somehow slip below the Mason-Dixon Line. Fortunately, nothing is so tenuous about our situation. This strict view – good states don’t allow bad behavior – leads us to pile on rules without any perspective on the real-life effects of those rules. Until we stop wearing policies as a badge of honor, it will be hard to honestly assess their impact on people.
The Cato Institute released its ranking of states based on personal and economic freedom, which placed Connecticut in the bottom ten states in the nation. Connecticut dropped to 45th in the country - one spot lower than the previous 2014 ranking. The Cato Institute performs the ranking every two years and factors in personal freedom - such as marriage laws, drug and alcohol prohibitions, incarceration and gun rights - and state fiscal and regulatory policy.