by Martin Green

At last February’s legislative breakfast held at the municipal offices in Stowe, Rep. Dave Yacovone (D-Lamoille) put forth the bold proposal—as his solution to a question (which I don’t remember now) someone in the audience asked—to levy a tax on everyone in Vermont who makes over $500K a year. 

His chutzpah to declare his proposal in Stowe—of all the possible towns in Vermont he could have done this—was about as brazen, or perhaps unthinking, as can be imagined. I thought it might be as audacious a scenario as if a California legislator went to Gilroy, CA, the garlic capital of the world (I hear they even have garlic ice cream there—“Darling, would you like to go out this evening for a garlic creemee?”) suggesting that any garlic farmer who grows over X bushels of garlic will now be obligated to hand over a certain percentage of his bulbs to the state coffers.

Closer to home, think of Vermont’s largest maple producers being required under new legislation to donate or otherwise surrender X gallons of syrup to Montpelier.

As I was picking blueberries recently on a gorgeous Vermont summer afternoon in the blueberry patch at our home in Morrisville, I thought of Rep. Yacovone’s proposal.

We’ve owned our home here in the village for thirty-two years and planted these eleven bushes thirty-one years ago. They are still going amazingly strong, producing bumper crops every summer. 

What a joy it is to go out and pick blueberries and put them in pancakes, muffins, and assorted other baked goods, yogurt or cottage cheese, freeze them to use in the winter and throughout the year, or find other ways to enjoy them. 

We have cultivated them, fertilized them, pruned them, and used various methods to scare away and deter birds from pecking at and ruining them. We’ve hauled hundreds of pounds of ever-shedding pine needles from other sections of our yard to spread on the blueberry patch to help provide the acid soil blueberries love. We have given hundreds of pounds away to friends and neighbors over the years. No one ever told us to give them away; we just wanted to share our abundant blessings with others. We’ve invited folks to come and pick them. We’ve taught our children—and now our grandchildren—how to know when they are ready so as not to pick them until they are ripe and sweet. Of course, our grandsons’ immediate reward is to pick and eat them right off the bushes. 

How grateful we are to have the liberty in this beautiful country and in Vermont to just go out into the yard, pick our blueberries, grow our own fruits and vegetables, and eat and enjoy them. 

But as I was slowly navigating my way through the thick of the seven-foot high bushes while filling up a quart berry basket that afternoon, I thought of Dave’s proposal to assess a tax on all those who make over $500K in Vermont. Here’s the parallel I drew:

My family and I have worked hard to grow and enjoy these blueberries over the years, and we have enjoyed the literal fruits of our labors. But I thought that if Dave Yacovone has his way, he would set some arbitrary metric or high-bar limit, induce his fellow legislators to sign on to his plan, and make a law which caps the amount of blueberries I can keep before he demands that I must give some of them to the state as a penalty for growing too many. 

Dave and his committees would then have to create some type of agency to determine whom best to give my family’s blueberries to. Then our tax dollars would be needed to pay for some type of government enforcement mechanism to ensure that we are dutifully surrendering to the government the amount of blueberries over the limit (let’s say, for example, one hundred pounds) we have picked. 

Dave may call his proposal whatever he likes. He may call this policy Democracy. Others might refer to it as redistribution of wealth, social democracy, progressivism, egalitarianism, Democratic Socialism, Socialism, or Communism. 

I call it stealing.

I call it thievery.

He tells me that his proposal would not deter folks who make over $500K from moving out of Vermont, nor would it disincentivize folks who make over $500K from moving to Vermont. But if we use the example of blueberries, why in the world would anyone who has been busting their assets for years to diligently grow blueberries—such as Rev. Brown’s U-Pick field in Craftsbury with a thousand bushes—now want to keep growing blueberries in Vermont? 

Why would anyone have the incentive to grow lots of blueberries if he or she knew Dave Yacovone was going to take some of them away by coercion and allocate them to who knows where, especially to murderous, corrupt, and disgusting organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, against whose ideologies and practices I could not be more fervently opposed?

He may try to shame folks who make over $500K and guilt them into giving away some of their money. But you cannot force charity. You cannot legislate a benevolent heart. You cannot casually impugn the human dignity and free will of everyone who makes over $500K by insinuating  they’re greedy or doing something inherently wrong by making over the arbitrary amount he has determined.

For the record, I do not make anywhere remotely close to $500K. I do not, nor have not, ever even made close to $100K. But it’s the principle of the thing because, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. 

Making and having money and wealth is not an evil which must be penalized or taxed. It’s actually a great sign of the health of a community and an economy. Free enterprise and the economic liberty to generate wealth is a hallmark of our constitutional republic, one which sets us apart from other countries. 

On the other hand, unjust and inequitable taxation and onerous acts by Britain against the colonies were part of the tinder which eventually fanned into passionate flames the moral courage in the hearts of our brave and heroic founders, patriots, and the Sons of Liberty to tell King George and his minions, “No more!” The American Revolution ensued, tyranny was defeated, independence secured, and liberty and common sense prevailed. 

But is that common sense and liberty prevailing today under the Golden Dome?

Growing lots of blueberries is not wrong nor should it be seen as excessive and, therefore, capped at some arbitrary level for the state to determine, taken away from me and my family, and then redistributed to someone else.

And we’re not talking apples and oranges here.