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…..Vermonters disagree on how to stop it, Morgan Gold reports
Text & video by Morgan Gold
Only 23% of Vermonters would tell an 18-year-old to stay here and build a life. Four years ago it was 36%.
Vermont is small, old, and spread out. When fewer people are around to split the bill for roads and schools and state government, everybody’s share goes up, and the cost pushes young families out, which leaves even fewer people to pay. That’s what I call the Green Mountain Death Spiral.
In this video I go through this fall’s Vermont Public and University of New Hampshire polls and the couple of things most Vermonters actually agree on: taxing second homes and keeping big data centers out. I look at why those ideas are so popular, what they cost, and how they fit a habit that goes back to Vermonters voting down the Green Mountain Parkway in 1936.
Then I get into schools. I went to a special town meeting in Peacham where my town voted to buy its own elementary school for $1. I also look at what happened in Roxbury, what the Act 46 mergers actually saved, and why every town fighting to keep its school can be the right call and part of the problem at the same time.
This video was made by Morgan Gold of Peacham. This video is an independent production and no funding, gifts or any other direct or indirect compensation was offered or accepted to help make this video.
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23% of native Vermonters or 23% of people living in Vermont? Huge difference there. Huge!
When I was in High School (in the 1970s), our grandmother would repeatedly tell all of us grandchildren: “Get out of Vermont! You will never make a living in Vermont!”
Smart lady.
But I’ve lived all over the world, always loving Vermont the more for the contrast. I’m stickin’.
And the death spiral isn’t so much in fewer people, it is in who can afford the high taxes, and how much bureaucracy has sucked from the profitable entrepreneurial sector.