Governor Malloy’s latest economic development plan has buried its best part under another hundred million dollars in state government subsidies for particular businesses, subsidies that substitute government’s judgment for the market’s and pick winners and losers as a matter of political patronage.
But the governor also proposes dividing $15 million among municipal governments and nonprofit agencies in areas of high unemployment. Unemployed and unskilled people would be hired to do local infrastructure and social service work. Many would get some training and build qualifications for jobs in the private sector.
The needs for such a program are clear. Municipal governments always can use help maintaining and repairing their property, and state government already heavily uses social service agencies to care for the disabled and otherwise needy at far less cost than is incurred when state government does so through its own employees — and still many basic human needs are unmet.
With those unmet needs on one side of the social ledger and, on the other side, the expenses of unemployment compensation and various income supports for the able-bodied, it must be asked why Connecticut should have any unemployment at all. Why couldn’t government provide a minimum-wage job and basic medical insurance to everyone who is out of work, whereby those income supports could be earned and provide job training at the same time?
The federal Works Progress Administration did this sort of thing during the Depression and kept many out of destitution and despair.
Of course the public employee unions would oppose diminishing their control of government employment, and the duration of the jobs created for the unemployed would have to be limited so that the program facilitated movement of workers back into the private sector and didn’t just add to government’s bloat.
But Connecticut’s unmet social needs are as great as the income supports being paid by government. They should be reconciled urgently.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.
