Zimeng Fan

Imagine you could buy, in thousands of convenience stores across Connecticut, packs of heroin disguised as fruit-flavored candies. Imagine if people walked the streets, tricking your daughter into these “delicacies.” Imagine the double life she would be forced to live, begging or stealing to feed her addiction. Imagine significant trepidation, anxiety, and depression — all happening at once — munching away her soul like parasites. Imagine your children living like zombies, enslaved by a craving that damages their hearts, lungs, and brains, ruining their relationships, their education, and their prospects for a future.

Imagine you are retired, living on fixed income, forced to move out of Connecticut due to steeply rising property taxes. Imagine you are an insurance employee, laid off because soaring corporate taxes drove your company away. Imagine you are an anxious homeowner, afflicted by plummeting property values caused by population outflow. This is the dilemma that Connecticut is grappling with: High taxation begets corporations fleeing; corporations fleeing beget moribund insurance industry; moribund insurance industry begets a shrinking tax base and plummeting property values; a shrinking tax base and plummeting property values have generated a vicious cycle of ever-higher tax increases on remaining residents.