We’ve been living with the illusion that manufacturing is so 20th century.

That we could succeed by concentrating, for example, on complex financial instruments while abandoning the industrial base that sustained so many American families.

I clearly remember over 20 years ago as I drove to my job at UTC, an elected official announcing that Connecticut’s future lay in the service industry, not manufacturing. Who made that “pronouncement” is long forgotten, it does not matter, for it was a vision held by many if not most in Hartford.

I said quietly to the radio, “Value must be added”.

Value, the kind that people pay money for, is created by transforming materials into objects that people will pay more for, more for than in it’s un-improved state.

An oak tree has value, a oak table has more value. A set of plans on how to transform the oak tree into a table, has some value, but only when the tree becomes a table. More value is gained when you have an oak table to sell, than just an oak tree. Lesser skilled people can grow and cut down an oak tree, whereas skilled craftsman make tables.

As goes manufacturing, engineering follows, then finance follows.

When manufacturing moves to lower cost areas, the engineering staff will soon follow. It is an illusion that engineering can be far away from the production floor. And the finance guys? Their jobs move with a click of the mouse.

As I look at the graph detailing 76,000+ jobs lost in Connecticut in just the past year, I cringe. It’s tough to create a job, easy to lose a job.

What’s to be done? There is a myth floating around Connecticut that our superior education system will keep companies here. It is a myth, easily shown false by the vast numbers of jobs doing rather nicely in the South. Highly educated workers/engineers/scientists have to leave the state when their jobs of supplying the brain power to industry leave. Believe me, the New South, is in no small part us Yankees.

That we could all be knowledge workers transferring designs half way around the world with mouse clicks, was a Utopian idea never really held by those holding the working capital.

Indeed Connecticut has the highest rate of 18-34 year olds exodusing the state, more than any other state in the United States of America. If that is not a damning statistic of how miss-managed this state is, then what is? If we can not as a state provide for the future of our children, then it is a failed state.

The UConn economic forecast says Connecticut continues to lag in job growth. Over the past two decades, the forecast says, Connecticut “has seen perhaps the poorest job creation among all fifty states.” Taking a broader perspective, the forecast says there is little hope Connecticut will see a restoration in job growth, especially in high-wage jobs, “given current policy and economic development initiatives.”

Do we hear any change in proved failed policies out of Hartford? No, taxes were raised, and will be raised more. The worst idea ever was a surcharge on business.

We still have the infrastructure, we still have the people. We have the location, believe me this is a great place to live. The world comes here for medical care (Greater New England). They don’t go to Alabama or Georgia, or Kentucky for medical treatment. And the cultural aspects of New York City and Boston beat just about anything elsewhere in the US.

A key phrase in the UConn economic forecast, “little hope Connecticut will see a restoration in job growth, especially in high-wage jobs, given current policy and economic development initiatives”.

Increasing business taxes is NOT a economic development initiatives. At least not anywhere else. Change needs to come to Connecticut.