2nd highest taxed state in the Union. Socialist democrats love their taxes.

The gas tax roll-back was intended to ease a potentially-massive energy spike due to a world war breakout in Eastern Europe a year ago.

That war is on a slow burn and will definitely get worse. Now state is hedging their bets as to gently taking back those tax cuts or leaving them.

Encourage your legislators to keep the tax cuts! This a tax cut for everyone, includes free bus fare. State coffers are doing just fine without it and it’s one less thing to showcase about this state being outrageously expensive.

It was suspended leading up to the November elections, now it's coming back. We can't win here. Gas is going up in price 25 cents a gallon, and our electric rates are the highest around and are going up again soon. You're either giving all your money for transportation and heating to an oil company, or eversource, just like intended.

If this keeps up, we will all soon live in corporate owned rental housing, taking out loans to pay our rent and utilities. Banks and big companies always win, we the people are just crops to harvest cash from.

That’s not at all what “socialism” is - and topping it off democrats are capitalist, not socialist. Get your nonsense out of here and follow the profit.

But hey - when I walk into S&S to overpay for eggs, I can see eversource banners on the shopping cart corrals telling me they can help with the high bills they themselves set.

Our taxes are so bad some one needs to do some thing about it before we all bankrupt 🤔

Regarding the electric rates, if you choose a competitive supplier, they are some of the lowest in New England… I believe.

60 eggs at Walmart for $19.98. A dozen at Whole Foods for $4.29-$4.79.

Stop and Shop pricing has been insane for around a year now. Mostly stopped going there.

I won't hold my breath, the only reason the state had a budget surplus was because of COVID relief money. That's over so the state will go back to losing money this year. The word is out, CT is dying. We have 26% more people leaving than coming and no company is trying to build here given the overhead costs of development, operation and energy. The only chance would be to cut spending but that would be political suicide for our elected officials so they are just going to ride the wave.

The state budget surplus was exclusively from COVID stimulus funding. That ended and this year we will operate at a deficit again. They can't afford the budget and the population to tax is declining.

It is the effect of socialism as it plays out. This state is not operating on capitalist principles right now. The state government is compelling societal transition to things like solar and EV's. A capitalist strategy would be to make the transition more profitable so it is naturally appealing. When you can't do that, and instead use taxes and regulation to make the cheaper option more expensive, that is socialist.

> A dozen at Whole Foods for $4.29-$4.79.

A dozen eggs at Whole Foods is cheaper than a dozen eggs at ALDI?

Whole Foods has competitive pricing. Stuff is often the same or cheaper than Stop&Shop IMO. Here are prices for the Avon location today.

https://imgur.com/a/QChMHOY

I’ve been saying this all COVID. People forget Amazon has owned Whole Foods for awhile now, and the entirety of what that means.

Just like any other business under the Bezos empire, Whole Foods is now the king of loss leaders…in the grocery space. Food staples like eggs, beans, milk, in the store brand are often cheaper then what I see anywhere except Aldi, and haven’t shifted significantly with inflation. Amazon is attempting to use the current environment to grab market share.

Not to mention the fact that the Whole Foods store brand is better quality then other store brands, and equivalent or better then many boutique brands in other chains, like S&S, BigY, or Shop Rite.

I haven't seen high egg prices anywhere

So Stay off the roads.

You haven’t seen high egg prices? Stop and Shop is easily $7.49-$8 per dozen.

Nope. 4.99 a dozen at shoprite and wholefoods

Not true, much of the budget surplus is from higher than expected tax revenue which is looks like it is here to stay.

https://ctmirror.org/2023/01/17/ct-budget-surplus-lamont-tax-cuts/

CT received $10 billion in COVID relief over all. By the end of last year, our surplus was down to $4 billion, end of this year, a.k.a February, it will be $3.2 billion, and they expect us to bleed it dry. Lamont is using some of it to invest in infrastructure, to his credit, but it won't be enough. Our operating budget is $47 billion, you can subtract special revenue from that, which is about $18 billion and transportation and special projects, which are another $4 billion. But the general budget was $20.1 and pensions were $6 billion and our total tax revenue was only $21.4 billion plus some federal investment. There is still a net loss per year of about $1.7 billion in the budget when everything is added together, so we are living off surplus for now. He does have plans to reverse this by 2024, but inflation has not been applied to the general budget.

...we just going to ignore the tax being suspended leading up to midterms so people aren't seeing the consequences of their votes when making them? We are voting in these choices, and there's no free lunch. When we sign emissions treaties, kill pipelines to lessen usage (eg, more expensive) and have to upgrade the grid for solar while killing development of denser housing you get New England prices.

You sure threw out a lotta numbers and no links. Cite your sources.

https://openbudget.ct.gov/#!/year/2022/operating/0/fund_type

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/OPM/Budget/ComptrollerLetter/FY-2022/FY-2022_July_20_2022_Comptroller_Letter.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjxufT2o9_8AhXqE1kFHZfnBWIQFnoECAoQBg&usg=AOvVaw2JaYbRDuzst5JzbBmUgH2G

The full expense report for 2022 won't be out until March, but the first link shows a basic bar graph of expenses, the second shows a partial 2022 report and how revenue is calculated and spent.

Tolls solves this problem

It’s not an election year, duh!

Democrats are for big government and high taxes. Socialist ideology. Lots of democrats won’t even deny it.

> Socialist democrats love their taxes.

I love Connecticut. Our taxes are the premium I'm happy to pay to not be Louisana, Alabama, or Florida.

Now raise it and pin it to inflation.

Thank you Ned Lamont!

This is not accurate.

Keep the gas tax and keep raising it. We need to move away from gas cars and trucks, help nudge it along. Use the proceeds as rebate for electric vehicles. Add tolls to get out of state users of our interstates. Invest in renewables more to get electric rate down. This is the future whether you fight it or not.

Disgusting comment made by someone clearly out of touch

Absolutely. The state needs to seriously be planning tolls for the future. I think they already know it is the right transition to make, now just do it.

I would personally support tolls for all users, whether in state or not, but do acknowledge many will not be happy with that. It only makes sense that CT follows other states and gives a discount to residents.

Fuck tolls increase the gas tax

Fuck that I actually have a life and use the highways and drive a lot

Make Constitutional Amendments Great Again

Just make tolls state tax-deductible.

What is Wyoming doing by banning EV’s? Get out of here with that shit lol

It's as dumb as banning all gas cars. EV's are a good idea for cities. Gas vehicles are a good idea for outside of cities. The saddest part of this story is people recognize that banning one is stupid but not that banning the other is equally stupid.

The difference is, gas cars are bad for the environment and will not get better. EV’s are not, and will only get better. Especially with the push for green grid energy, which is cheaper than fossil fuel energy.

Green energy is not cheaper than fossil fuel energy... Unless you're talking nuclear, but cost per Kilowatt is always higher with wind and solar. The only reason this seems untrue is likely due to your local government. My electric bill in SC is $90 a month when I'm there. In CT, with similar conditions, it is about $400 a month right now. Beyond that, EV's cannot generate, they don't have the reliability of a gas car, which is why they don't make sense in more spread out parts of the country.

https://www.irena.org/news/pressreleases/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Remains-Cost-Competitive-amid-Fossil-Fuel-Crisis

Edit: EV’s are more reliable and have less maintenance than ICE vehicles.

 Require less maintenance, yes. No oil changes required and it is a motor instead of an engine. Past EV's are a much higher upfront cost, and when you need to do maintenance, the parts, such as wheel motors, batteries and control systems, are significantly more.  Beyond that's it is easier to fix an engine, than a motor so people who work on their own cars also see their cost skyrocket.
     I was a nuclear officer in the navy and am an electrical engineer. I also have both a Tesla model S and an Infiniti Q50. You're not going to show me an article that changes the actual math and research I've done on the subject.

Sounds like you should be giving up your ego, and credentials. As a man of science, which I am as well, you should be willing to be proven wrong. I suggest you do your research, and learn something new. You also bought $160k in cars.

We all know being a nuclear officer means nothing.

I work in magnetic levitation now for turbine generators. Tried it with wind farms, it was a waste of raw material for the energy produced. It's not an ego thing, it is a common consensus among actual engineers. Solar makes sense for individuals in their home, but is not cheaper than grid energy unless there is policy in place either subsidizing solar or making grid power more expensive. EV's have limited range and we have only developed a limited infrastructure. We are about 30 years of development away in both the mining and construction of an appropriate infrastructure. They require a significant amount of cobalt and lithium, which are worse for the environment to mine than virtually any other material on the planet and the first cobalt mine in the US isn't going to even begin brining out resources for another 10 years. That would be stock ticker LAC or lithium america corporation, feel free to check Hydro electric and geothermal are good green energy solutions, but most people know nothing about either and are talking about solar when they mean green energy, including you.

The state would need to pay the feds back billions of dollars in federal funds used for our highways since we removed tolls previously. Doesn't seem like a good idea just for this reason.

But you still can't get away from their delivery charge, which is where they are sticking to us.

Delivery charge hasn’t gone up in a year plus. Switching to a competitive supplier means saving $70/month for a household that uses 750kWh/month.

True. My point was that we can reduce the generation charge a bit, but there's nothing we can do about their insidious delivery charge. It may not have gone up in a year, but it's gone up considerably over the past several years.