Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve

Goodbye Connecticut

November 24, 2015 By E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

Over the weekend a client emailed me an article about Connecticut’s Borgeson Universal Co. It produces steering components and has operated in Torrington, Connecticut since 1914. It is leaving Connecticut for South Carolina because business is no longer doable or wanted in Connecticut. Here is the article:

With the Litchfield hills and Connecticut in our rear-view mirror as we move our 101-year-old manufacturing company to South Carolina, we are nostalgic, excited, and disappointed.

We love Torrington and Connecticut but not all the things the General Assembly and the governor have done to induce us to leave family and friends behind. After more than a century of manufacturing in Connecticut, we are not looking for handouts.

We have paid our fair share, but enough is enough.

Connecticut’s high cost of doing business and its anti-employer attitude have finally driven us out. We are not moving for any government incentives.

Consider these facts:

  • We sold our 50,000-square-foot building for enough money to buy a 100,000-square-foot building — and still had enough money left to pay for the transport of 100 trailer loads of machinery and equipment to our new site.
  • The property taxes on our big new facility in South Carolina are much less than those on our smaller former building in Connecticut.
  • Our utility costs in South Carolina, especially for electricity, will be about a third of what we paid here, though our space will more than double.
  • We are taking a third of our employees with us and paying them the same wages. With South Carolina’s lower cost of living, it is as if they are getting a big raise. And we pay our new employees in South Carolina competitive local wages.

These savings could no longer be ignored.

At the same time, the constant hostility of the General Assembly, the governor, and state agencies, particularly the state Labor Department, settled the matter against staying in Connecticut.

Year after year employers like us have to fight off efforts to:

— Expand state requirements for paid sick leave.

— Increase the highest minimum wage in the nation to $15 per hour and more.

— Require paid family and medical leave.

— Impose unworkable restrictions on workforce scheduling.

— Restrict our ability to talk to our employees about union organizing efforts.

— And, of course, make us pay for every new “investment” policymakers think is a good idea.

We have always believed that to attract the best employees, we need to be among the best employers. We have never paid minimum wage and we have always offered our employees excellent benefits, including health insurance plans, paid vacation time, disability insurance, a 401(k) plan with employer matching contributions, profit sharing, and other time off based on individual needs.

Some people in authority in Connecticut refuse to understand that a mandated $15 minimum wage would mean that companies like ours would have to raise pay across the board. It would mean that rather than investing in our company and being able to create more jobs, we would have to raise pay for all employees, including those who are already being paid a good wage. These cost increases would cause us to raise the price of our product and become less competitive with companies outside Connecticut.

To make it worse, staying in Connecticut would require us to speculate on how much more our taxes and costs will go up as state government fails to pass a balanced budget.

Under the current administration state government has imposed nearly $4 billion in tax increases and still runs a deficit.

We can’t afford to wait for the governor and the legislature to see they have a spending problem and to address it. We can’t wait for state government to make any more “investments” by giving our money to a few favored companies.

Perhaps the final straw for us was our mind-boggling treatment by the Labor Department, which actually awarded unemployment compensation to an employee who was fired for threatening a supervisor with physical harm.

No one is surprised that the only state agency we heard from when the word got out that we were thinking of leaving was the Labor Department, which insisted that we allow it into our company to conduct a seminar for our employees to tell them how to get all the benefits they were entitled to.

So, farewell to home, family, and friends. We have been forced to move to a place where we are welcomed and wanted.

Regrettably, it is no longer Connecticut.

Alan and Gerald Zordan own Borgeson Universal Co. in Torrington, which produces steering components and has operated in Torrington since 1914.

Related Posts

  • Goodbye Obamacare in South Carolina?
  • Taxes on Dividends
  • Survival States: Sales Taxes
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998.

E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention.

E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris.

Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com
Latest posts by E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy (see all)
  • Fear is a Terrible Emotion: How You Deal with It MATTERS - August 15, 2022
  • Buying A Boat: Who’s Looking Out for You? - August 12, 2022
  • Your Survival Guy’s Favorite Number is 72: Here’s Why - August 11, 2022

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Are You Prepared to Run Out of Water?
  • The Swiss Way
  • What Do You Know About Rho-Kinase?
  • A NEW CONTRACT WITH AMERICA: Rick Scott Finally Gives the GOP Something to Run On
  • Warning! Your Survival Guy’s on a Boil Water Advisory
  • Meet Me at Freddy’s June 2022
  • The Four Most Important Words in Investing
  • You May Be Surprised by America’s “Least Woke City”
  • DIGITAL DOLLAR DOOMSDAY: The Wall Street Journal Is NOT Going to Tell You This
  • Tom Brady Is Proof You Shouldn’t Retire if You Still Love Your Work

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Fear is a Terrible Emotion: How You Deal with It MATTERS
  • The Victims of a Decade of Easy Money
  • What Happens if the Chinese Blockade Taiwan?
  • Buying A Boat: Who’s Looking Out for You?
  • Is It Time to Talk About the Defects of Index Funds Now?
  • Your Survival Guy’s Favorite Number is 72: Here’s Why
  • Disney Catches Netflix in Streaming Wars
  • PRIMARY RESULTS: Pro-Trump Candidates Clean Up
  • Prices for Electric Vehicles Going UP
  • Europeans Closing Businesses Early to Save on Energy

The Claremont Institute: Protecting the American Way of Life

Thanks to America’s Worst President

The IRS’s Hassle Tax: Spend More on Compliance

ROBERTS: “Today Education Is a Form of Brainwashing”

CDC Admits It Was All A Lie

Nancy in Taiwan, Paul Pelosi in Court?

Copyright © 2022 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives