The Colorado Sun has the bad news, and the state’s economist has the tranquilizer dart.
Colorado lost 11,700 jobs last year. The labor force shrank. January kept sliding the wrong way. That is the first non-pandemic annual job loss since 2010. And the official response is basically: calm down, other states also feel lousy, this is all very complicated, please do not draw any impolite conclusions about the people running Colorado into a ditch.
But the conclusion is sitting there in broad daylight.
When a state loses jobs, loses workers, watches participation drop, and keeps revising the numbers downward, that is not just “flat-growth territory.” That is a state in slowdown while the managerial class keeps talking like a guy describing a house fire as a warmth event. The Sun even gets to the question on page three: something about Colorado? Yes. Something about Colorado. Amazing breakthrough.
Maybe it is the $1.5 billion budget shortfall. Maybe it is the roughly 600 bills oozing through the legislature like a regulatory sewer backup. Maybe it is a government that never met a mandate, fee, lawsuit, climate sermon, labor rule, housing distortion, or bureaucratic hobbyhorse it did not want to strap onto the productive class and call progress. Jared Polis and the Democrat virtue-signal factory under the Gold Dome have spent years governing like economic growth is just a stubborn peasant that needs more supervision.
And that is the real scam here. They still want credit for the Colorado they inherited while pretending they bear no responsibility for the Colorado they are building. They brag about the great fifteen-year run. Terrific. So did a lot of people living off momentum they did not create. Past performance is not proof of current competence. It is proof that a place with real assets can survive a lot of stupid government before the bill comes due.
Well, the bill is starting to come due.
Business owners feel it. Workers feel it. Families feel it. Energy costs, housing costs, compliance costs, tax pressure, endless meddling, endless moral preening, endless government acting like your job is to finance its self-esteem. Colorado used to feel like a state that wanted you here. Increasingly it feels like a state run by people who see you as taxable livestock with mountain views.
So no, it is not surprising that the state-paid economists want to minimize the stink. That is part of the job. Spray perfume on decline and call it nuance. But normal people can smell what is happening. The last person out may not need to turn off the lights. The state might regulate the switch first.
Source: The Colorado Sun
Just Stop It
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