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Contesting the Progressives' Takeover of Vermont
 [American Thinker] Recently, the state of Vermont announced that pension and health benefits for state employees and teachers are underfunded to the tune of $4.5 billion (in a tiny state of just 627,180 residents). Then, in protest against Trump administration rule changes, it diverted some $750,000 from state coffers (each year, indefinitely) to fund abortion services through Planned Parenthood rather than continue to accept federal subsidies which had been proffered since 1970.Many Vermonters, like most Americans, are struggling to pay their property taxes. I live on land passed down to me from my great-great-great-great-grandfather, in a house I built by sawing timbers on the 6.5 acre lot, on a foundation I constructed with granite block. There is no mortgage -- and also no running water, no septic system, no plumbing or electric, and the driveway is impassable without four-wheel drive. But our real estate taxes are just under $2,500 annually, roughly equivalent to a $65,000, 30-year mortgage at current rates. Yet, in 30 years that phantom tax mortgage will not be paid off -- it will be massively larger. Vermonters love their state, but most are struggling to afford to live here. Many are paying $10,000 or more annually in real estate taxes on family land, which is often in a "current use" conservation program -- but still the taxes escalate. Retirees sell up and live in RVs, "going mobile" to avoid taxes. Young people seek tiny houses to shrink what the Vermont government can siphon off from their incomes. But still the government bureaucracy swells, regardless of the underlying economy. Vermont boasts the fifth highest property tax in the nation, but the 24th lowest median income, and the 19th lowest home values. In stark contrast, neighboring New Hampshire has the second highest real estate taxes -- but no sales tax, and the sixth highest median income in the nation. Meanwhile, Vermont offers the fourth largest amount of welfare benefits per capita in the nation, granting $42,350 annually in pre-tax equivalents: Posted by: Besoeker 2019-09-19 |
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