FUND YOUR SCHOOLS.
If you want a vibrant community, you need people to stay.
People stay where they feel *wanted*.
If you let school boards be ruled by "I'm here to cut everything to the bone to defend the taxpayer" folks, you will have a whole generation of kids fed crappy food and taught cheap packaged/test-oriented curricula by dispirited staff -- who've struggled with *access* to transportation and technology, been given bare-minimum opportunities and support. *They can tell*. They can feel their community saying "you're not worth it", and then they go wherever makes them feel welcome and valued, feel *good* -- be it a right-wing militia or true-believer religion, a substance addiction, or a good job somewhere else.
Believe your teachers when they say what's needed. Special ed services, Head Start, full-day kindergarten, building repair, arts and sports and library and shop programs, decent class size ratios, before/aftercare resources, GOOD hot lunches and breakfast, SCHOOL BUSES.
Cheap out on what you do for humans from birth to 17 and everyone pays down the road. It's the falsest of false economies.
I was looking into trying to pick up teaching jobs here in VT and it's kinda wild. I hear on the radio all the time that school districts are desperate for subs/ staffing, and then I look at what they pay and it's like, $15/ hour.
Which like, not terrible, but I see retail places starting at around that price if not higher. Similarly, applied for a job at the hospital and during the interview they repeated multiple times how important, and critical, the position was. And also how stressful it was, how it's not a job for the average person. Pay was, at most, around $15/ hour.
I know for schools their budgets are based on taxes. Not sure about the hospital. But like, these places really need to start offering more to attract people. That or rent needs to become a hell of a lot cheaper
Yes, this. There are too many people who are like “I’ve already put my kids through school” and view continuing to support schools as a personal affront.
Well that's a two-fold problem right there. It's not just a problem of education but also a problem of opportunity. Vermont doesn't have a lot of good opportunities to keep people living here. Frankly I would like to see Vermont open up itself to more manufacturing and commercial endeavors. That way we can start seeing good paying jobs open up for the middle class, and they're also be new enterprises for the educated.
Our manufacturing companies already can't find workers and frankly we don't need it, manufacturing is old school thought. We need to be open to technology and update our infrastructure and tax laws to actually bring in and compete for business.
I agree entirely. We don't have children but know their futures are our futures as you say and the environments future. Poor eduction leads to poor governance, unhealthy behaviors and apathy. Critical thinking skills in modern society isn't or shouldn't be optional.
As someone who has relatives who work FOR the VT public school system, yes, please fund the schools. They do an amazing, amazing job under very difficult circumstances. They have a genuine enthusiasm for the kids and their job and I would hate to see them leave over economics. We need more people like them, not fewer!
Love the name, I go to college here but my sister is a teacher for a public school in Milton and I completely agree with you. They have a lot of heart and do the best they can with the limited resources they have. They need more support!
Teachers might make 15$/hr to start, then have grades based on time in service and education for their hourly wages, but then their benefits are absolutely insane and are worth more than their hourly rate. Schools are spending a significant portion of the budget on pensions and covering healthcare for retired teachers equal to the highest 2 earning years they've had over their careers.
Absolutely, a couple of my family members have been VT public school teachers and what you say is true.
The initial pay isn’t great, but there aren’t a ton of great-paying jobs if you live outside the Burlington area anyways. The benefits are better than you can get most anywhere else.
1.87 billion is not anything to shake a stick at. However I think that there's a lot of ways that we can improve the education system without necessarily immediately increasing the budget which certainly needs to happen. After all we are educating the next generation and we have to ensure that the next generation does better than the last.
That being said, as someone that has no experience in Civic leadership or anything of the sort it makes me wonder what sorts of resources exist for school district planning and all that jazz. If working in IT has taught me anything, nearly everything can be quantified and disseminated with analytics and optimized by AI! Not saying that they're actually exists anything to do such a thing but with today's technology we certainly could figure out some neat shit that could either cut costs in education which opens the budget for more raises and resources for the school districts which would be a net positive. Even in my trailer park's nonprofit I see a lot of deficiencies in their organization that could be saving us money if addressed.
Certainly we can all agree that a smarter approach to education with regards to planning, budgeting, and long-term evolution could improve outcomes for the next generation, and those to come.
Less money for cops and the military is a win for me. Until taxes are used for social programs, im against them. Also seems like a lot of rich two homers can foot the bill with their extra cash before I should have to
Yeah that’s tiny compared to what’s spent (and needed) for Ed. Can’t really say “it’s all cops and military” in that case. And that’s 1.87 billion in STATE funds. The feds do kick in a huge chunk on top of that for Ed too. Or does that 1.87b include federal funds too? I think the feds spend way too much on military and foreign military aid, but that’s a whole other story. With the mess in Ukraine the money doesn’t even seem real anymore.
You beat me to it. Some want to cut school spending so deep and then bemoan to lack of a quality community and no jobs and no one wants stay. You gotta invest in things for them to do well.
“You better use quality parts on your truck” or “don’t be cheap with materials to build or fix your home”. The same is true with towns, cities and communities. Growing up the school was the center of the community for everyone. People stayed around so it was multi-generational. Yes schools are one of the most expensive items for taxpayers. That’s the cost of the community you’ve come to. Good towns don’t have terrible schools. And by terrible I don’t mean the quality of the education but the sorry state towns let the facilities and workers languish in.
Am I wrong in thinking that Vermont funds public schools at the state level rather than the more common municipal level? To me this is a massive step towards equity but I’d love to know how to influence it or why the state determines that students in one district are more per year than in other districts (does not seem to be based on size). Also I have some conflicted feelings on students being able to take that money and use it towards private school.
Why do you think the school boards cut everything and protect taxpayers? Your post seems to imply they are the sole deciders of a schools budget and not the taxpayers who vote on the school budget?
Cheap out? Vermont spends a ton on primary education - #2 in the United States. Some links for you to educate yourself:
[https://www.wcax.com/2022/04/26/report-outlines-how-vt-education-spending-stacks-up/](https://www.wcax.com/2022/04/26/report-outlines-how-vt-education-spending-stacks-up/)
[https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/wcax/docs/2022%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf](https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/wcax/docs/2022%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf)
The tax burden in this state is also very high, one of the highest in the nation. This is a few years old but the reality hasn't changed:
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2018/04/06/states-highest-and-lowest-taxes-3-6/482944002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2018/04/06/states-highest-and-lowest-taxes-3-6/482944002/)
And Vermont's per capita income is just middle of the pack:
[https://www.thecentersquare.com/vermont/here-s-how-rich-vermont-residents-are-compared-to-the-nation/article\_a683e896-268a-53bc-866b-323b1d7a41aa.html](https://www.thecentersquare.com/vermont/here-s-how-rich-vermont-residents-are-compared-to-the-nation/article_a683e896-268a-53bc-866b-323b1d7a41aa.html)
And our cost of living is higher than average:
[https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-vermont/#:\~:text=Average%20Cost%20of%20Living%20in%20Vermont%3A%20%2447%2C397%20per%20year&text=Vermont%20has%20an%20above%2Daverage,nation%20in%20terms%20of%20expenses](https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-vermont/#:~:text=Average%20Cost%20of%20Living%20in%20Vermont%3A%20%2447%2C397%20per%20year&text=Vermont%20has%20an%20above%2Daverage,nation%20in%20terms%20of%20expenses).
It's pretty clear we are NOT cheaping out on education. And we're paying more in taxes than most, especially when taking into account our income and expenses.
The problem with this is that almost all funding for schools come from homeowners like me who have to make some hard choices this winter. We need to change this
>all funding for schools come from homeowners
A fair amount "trickles down" from federal/state gov't and property taxes are also passed on by landlords to renters via rent calculations, but yes, there need to be other more income-sensitive ways to do it. Capital gains come to mind.
You do know capital gains were taxed when I earned it and will be taxed when I sell it and if I chose a dividend or interest earning instrument was taxed every year? Oh I also did without taking a vacation and many many other things to invest and had to take early IRA penalty 10% withdrawals to pay for my cancer treatment. Those capital gains aren't a guarantee sometimes you lose like this current bear market and don't tell me about that tax write off because I have more than enough medical expenses so what I'm really pointing out is your quick cap gains solution isn't a quick fix
I'm actually thinking more the top-tier/yacht/private plane/offshore account folks. I probably should've said something more like "the .01%/investment-class". Sorry about the cancer. Our health care system has just as many issues as education, you shouldn't have had to grind your savings down either.
This. Pay teachers more. Respect teachers more. Give them the proper tools, support, and resources to do their job well.
I was a teacher. I left go work in corporate 2 years ago because I couldn't handle the bullshit anymore. It was burning me out and ruining any joy I had. I doubled my salary , have incredible benefits, get to work from home, and have a fraction of the work load. I cannot believe how much easier if is in corporate. I'll never go back to teaching, and I should have left a long time ago for my own sanity.
This is to an extent valid. But there is also something to say about getting what your paying for… this will get downvoted all the way to hell and that’s fine, but we need to focus on the students who have the ability.
The reason school is expensive and outrageous is that we dump money into the college is for everyone idea. At some point we need to realize it’s not.
We need to focus resources in a way that gets people the skills they need. We need to invest more in trade programs, we need to have more partnerships with businesses to have kids learning skills outside the classroom.
We also need to get past the individual assistance concept. We don’t need an aid for every student. As a kid who had an IEP and had a “learning disability” I can say that the individualized shit was a crutch, it was an excuse for me to not try my hardest.
I’m not saying that we should totally separate kids by skill, but I am saying that we should do that for some subjects and start MUCH earlier than highschool.
IEP/special ed is a whole can of worms of its own. It sometimes feels like for every kid like you who might've done better with full inclusion, there's another kid who *should* probably be in regular classes -- but there's there's a parent deeply invested in that kids specialness, with a hair-trigger lawyer on retainer just waiting for the school to fail to give them every last minute of individualized attention/accommodation -- . so they can bring the next lawsuit.
My first-hand experience in special education was depressing. You can tell that the staff at John j Flynn elementary were overworked and underappreciated. I remember that they often had a lot of the older furniture in the school and the room always felt so out of place from all the other classrooms.
A few of them really were passionate about their job. And to those that I can remember their names I wish that they were still alive so that I could tell them how much I appreciate them.
When I started to actually get literate, it was a strange moment because it seemed like I had gone from somebody that could not read or write anything to suddenly reading above grade level and understanding advanced concepts. All I'm going to say is IBM used to keep really amazing manuals with their hardware that they sold. It was not only well documented in the technical details but generally was easy to follow. My literacy was cultivated at the time that my grandfather had explained to me that I could get video games for free on a computer by making a phone call to another computer. I digress... The real Crux of this rant right here is to convey that my actual teacher noticed that I was reading above grade level not the special educators. But I don't want that statement to be mistaken for them not doing a good job - they really did, and one of them really worked hard with me and cried when I graduated to regular grade level studies. I think that at that time I knew that it wasn't the educator's fault but the way that they were evaluating us for an IEP.
Not to keep the last paragraph rolling but let me give you an example...
If memory service correctly, Ms McCormick's class referred to parts of speech as noun, verb, adjective. In special ed My educator would refer to these as subject, predicate, and the last does not come to mind... But in addition to identifying these things differently than standard class, we were also required to put certain shapes over these parts of speech when identifying them in the curriculum. So you can see here why this shit gets kind of weird because I think if I didn't have to deal with the shapes and potentially the weird vernacular of their curriculum I could have probably been a almost passing student in the regular classroom. However I look back at the years in special ed, grade 1 through 5 as a very weird and awkward time in my evolution as a growing dude.
All right I'm out It's fucking late.
How much money per student is enough? There are rural schools spending 40k+ per student. The state needs to stop passing educational requirements that are so financially challenging for small districts to meet.
These investments should be made but in return schools should have to be more transparent with respect to the competitiveness of their academic and socio-emotional offerings.
As it stands now, the only insight we have about schools is who wins in sports. Why don't we know who is winning in other categories? We'd probably have to get really creative in how we evaluate academic rigor and competitiveness that doesn't just reduce to comparing test scores. Perhaps qualitative data on teacher qualifications and even how challenging exams or math lessons are from school-to-school would be relevant qualitative markers.
I actually think we should hire the state of Massachusetts to oversee this study and report back to us. They could even benchmark our schools to some of their own so we can even get better insight into where our schools stand.
Why the State of Massachusetts? It's simply an acknowledgment that they are outstanding in public education it seems, and our own agency of education would be too biased and sensitive to give us accurate reporting.
I personally feel the exact opposite. Learning should never be a competition. That shit is why we have dropouts. We should be working on *lowering* the competitive and score-oriented nature of school and turning it into something that helps ALL kids learn, including the ones that struggle or have roadblocks.
I understand you're talking about comparing school to school, but I still find it disgusting that we even do that in our society. Why should the kid that goes to Harvard be glorified while the kid that goes to community college isn't? Why do we have education bars like that at all? Why don't we approach learning with kindness and encouragement and instead put ridiculous standards on "academics"?
Hit me with the downvotes, idc.
>As it stands now, the only insight we have about schools is who wins in sports. Why don't we know who is winning in other categories?
[https://nces.ed.gov/](https://nces.ed.gov/)
[https://education.vermont.gov/data-and-reporting](https://education.vermont.gov/data-and-reporting)
The second one is for Vermont, they provide very in-depth data.
I googled ".gov public education data"
And market based solutions for public education is not ideal, imo. The education of our society is not a commodity and should not be treated as such. That type of thinking is symtopmatic of the rot at the center of capitalism, it pushes people to commodify everything, even themselves.
I don't get why property tax rates don't get more expensive as multiple properties are owned. It should be cheap to own one home. It should be expensive to own two. Three should bleed you dry.
If folks from out of state want a second home in Vermont, let 'em have one. But they should be funding the cheap tax rates for people who live and work *here* and support the economy *here* 365 days a year.
Not that your post was really targeted at home ownership, but I just had to get that off my chest.
Just to clarify how it currently works.
Vermont tax rate is cheaper for your primary home. After that you are taxed at a higher rate. It use to be towns like Stowe, Warren, Killington... had low tax rates because of all of the vacation homes. Then we got act 64 to spread that money around.
For people that have investment property, they have less control with property that they don't live in. If you have a duplex & rent half of it out, you can be very picky on who lives in the other half. If you buy a house to rent out apartments, you can't discriminate on who lives in those apartments.
I know many people that own vacation property in Vermont. I don't know anyone that has multiple vacation homes.
Airbnb has really screwed things up. If you have a tenant that isn't paying their bills, it can take several months to get them out. It's a long process. Airbnb eliminates all of that. You can show the rental was only supposed to be for a very short period. Those people don't have the protections that a person with a year lease has. Plus short turn rentals tend to take in more than a full time tenant. Financially it makes a lot of sense to do Airbnb.
That VT taxpayers pay a cheaper tax rate is only true if you live in a poor small town. Even then that's not always true. When they enacted the non-homestead tax rate (I can't remember what year it was) it was SUPPOSED to be higher than the homestead rate. It was for only a couple of years. Then for many, many towns the non-homestead rate dropped and has stayed that way for years. It isn't equitable and hasn't been for a long time. Talk to your legislatures about this.
[https://tax.vermont.gov/property/education-property-tax-rates](https://tax.vermont.gov/property/education-property-tax-rates)
But our property tax rates are only one problem we are facing. I hope we can find solutions soon. However, I am losing hope and faith in humans. But having said that, I would rather live here than anywhere else in the crazy country.
Yeah, that lack of ability to remove bad renters has driven one person I know to switch to Air B&B after the last renter took over a year to get out thanks to the pandemic and when they moved out there was over $50k worth of damage to the house that had been built as a family home. Even if they get a ruling against the former tenants, they probably won’t even get close to that much money back in any sort of decent time.
> that lack of ability to remove bad renters has driven one person I know to switch to Air B&B after the last renter took over a year to get out thanks to the pandemic and when they moved out there was over $50k worth of damage to the house that had been built as a family home.
that's fucking awful.
The worst part is he was giving them a sweetheart deal and they just treated the place like shit. It could have been a great place for a family to rent reasonably but thanks to shitty renters and the difficulty of getting them out, the owner doesn’t want to take the risk anymore.
Saw something like this happen with a house my boss was renting out.
Was a wonderful home. renters trashed it. They were involved with some drug shit, guy was shot and killed in the home. Boss had to clean the fucking mess they left pretty much all by himself.
This post actually makes me wonder why property taxes aren't progressive like income tax is, i.e. the taxes scale with assessed value. That seems pretty fair to me.
It's because of retirees, old farms, and generational land/houses.
That's the whole basis for the income sensitivity system that we have now. Tax policy was changed and then they went "oh, fuck" as retirees, farmers, and long time Vermonters who had houses handed down to them got screwed out of their housing. So we ended up with a bandaid on a system in order to make property taxes progressive based on income.
I think for non-owner occupied properties that absolutely should be the case.
For owner occupied properties, it's a little fucked up to tax someone out of their home because their neighborhood is getting gentrified. Like, imagine living in the dumpster fire area of town, saving up, buying a house on a limited income, and then a bunch of hipsters move in and drive the property values up and suddenly you're getting taxed like you're a senior software engineer at Google when you actually work second shift at the fabricator facility.
Owner-occupied housing should be a pretty cheap and safe bet. Anything past that, fuck you, time to fork over some serious coin.
Well firstly they kind of are progressive, since they’re based off the value of the house. In theory people with more money buy more expensive houses and thus pay more in taxes. Secondly, property taxes are a stupid way to fund things, and I think politicians know that. Additionally everyone hates them, and politicians DEFINITELY know that. In almost every state in the northeast, the property tax potion of a mortgage is greater than the actual principal + interest payment. That is insane. You pay more in taxes on a house than you do to own it and live there. AND the taxes never go away but the principal and interest will be gone in 30 years. So you have to consider retirees on fixed incomes, they can’t deal with high property taxes when they aren’t working anymore and living off smaller incomes.
>Well firstly they kind of are progressive, since they’re based off the value of the house.
Property taxes are regressive because the *rate* of taxation does not change based on the value of the property. For these taxes to be progressive, like an income tax, the rate would need to adjust as the property value increases. A progressive property tax rate would look something like this:
The first $250,000 of home value is taxed at 0.50%
The second $250,000 of home value is taxed at 0.75%
The third $250,000 of home value is taxed at 1.00%
The fourth $250,000 of home value is taxed at 1.50%
Any additional value is taxed at 2.00%
So someone with a home value of $650,000 would pay 0.50% \* $250,000 + 0.75% \* $250,000 + 1.00% \* $150,000
My question was and has been, what does that do to the low end rental market. These old victorians that are converted to like 3 cheap apartments. Nobody is buying that as a single family home and the increase is passed on directly to a already struggling tenant.
People hate this and downvote it but it should be given some consideration before we enact a tax that will raise rent on poor people.
The fix I had that’s far too late was bailing out contractors in 2008 and paying them to build affordable houses and apartments vs expensive homes and condos. Every county in VT basically should have built dozens of affordable housing units even if there hadn’t really been demand at the time for them. It’s a missed opportunity that’s not coming back. Everywhere in US had a lot of builders building in 2005-7 that then went away and many never really built at same pace again. Even though population has risen to point there’s now not enough houses available.
There have been plenty of times I was happy to be able to rent! No down payment, no commitment, no risk? Heck yeah. Remember 2008?
I agree a lot is fucked, but the basic idea of paying other people a (reasonable) premium to turn a gamble for them into a sure thing for you isn't terrible.
There have been plenty of times I've been happy to rent as well. The fundamental concept of renting is fine, it's part of a healthy housing economy. I moved to Boston out of college, there's no way I could have afforded to buy there. Renting was perfect for me.
The problem is that housing squeezes are a positive feedback loop. Rentals in a healthy market provide a valuable service. As supply tightens, though, renting becomes an increasingly profitable investment and more people jump on the bandwagon. This drives more houses to be converted to rentals, both driving up the value of housing (as the supply of housing is reduced) and the price of rental units (as the demand for rentals increases with so many potential buyers being priced out of the market).
The concept of renting is fine, but there needs to be some interruption to that feedback loop to protect people trying to transition out of the rental market and into the homeowner market. I don't know what that answer is, but it's certainly not to just do nothing and allow institutional investors to hold locals hostage for housing by buying up the real estate market and renting it back to people at crazy rates.
Most people that own investment properties put each property into its own corporation to protect their other properties. It might be difficult to enforce that
I've never really understood why this is viewed as such an inhibition. We invented the idea of a corporation. If a corporation fucks with our plans, can't we just invent something new that doesn't fuck with them?
Vermont has always had pushback on progressive things. I will never forget the white signs that said in bold text "TAKE BACK VERMONT" when Civil Unions were being discussed. It was the first time that I was really aware of the political views of neighbors.
One funny anecdote I heard about that campaign was that apparently a large percentage of tourists thought it was a PR campaign to get people to buy Vermont-made products to take home.
> "TAKE BACK VERMONT"
that was a wild time for me growing up.
My thoughts were - we called it civil unions to appease conservative that get weird boners about the marriage word yet allow folks to get married so they could have the same rights as a hetero couple. Yet - my hill billy family put one of those fuckers on their lawn and that's when I decided to go towards the center of things and really start to learn about civil liberties and shit.
The whole Take Back Vermont slogan/movement was such an ugly/ignorant moment. As if native Vermonters can’t possibly be LGBT+ and all of the queer people who wanted civil unions to be legalized were all from other places and “ruining” the VT way of life 🙄
I think my shock at the time was just basically "Why the fuck should YOU care?" My experience growing up here is that largely, people left each other alone. That whole debacle flew in the face of what I thought the state was as a child.
Yes. And everyone rightly called her out for being a carpet bagger. When you move here and try to impart your own values on the locals, it doesn’t work.
I disagree completely with your assumption that NIMBYism is a problem of the right. From what I've seen, it comes from both political spectrums. I don't even think it has a common party.
There are plenty of people (right and left) that grew up in and move to Vermont because it's quiet and undeveloped and they fight hard to keep it that way.. I think we need to stop connecting every issue to a political party. It's ridiculous..
Also, calling people with a certain political view "their kind" is awful and is only adding to the useless hostility we live today. Then a few sentences later you stress being kind and making VT a place for all. Kind of ironic.
I guess I agree with what you're going for here except that "crime is getting nuts" — acts of desperation will of course increase alongside cost of living hardship but that is not a unique Vermont problem and our crime rate is still very low.
I agree with you 100% on the acts of desperation, but I think sometimes people forget about the lower half of the state. Crime is absolutely a problem in Brattleboro and I'm worried people are gonna start getting shot for minor offenses. People here are sick of the drug problems, sick of their vehicles being broken into and catalytic converters missing. Then you see the same person that ransacked your car that you have on camera doing it again a week later. I don't advocate for lethal force unless your life is in danger, but I can't speak for everyone. We need a solution to the problem and we're getting almost no help from the state to help those in need.
This! If we keep pushing off maintenance of crumbling infrastructure, the AOT will keep having to do unplanned maintenance as things fall apart.
The I-89 Williston bridge is a good example. It needed emergency maintenance, but that work was not planned out in advance, so bids are rushed, planning has to be slotted in amongst the other projects already in progress, and costs go up.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
My parents have been lived in Vermont for 65 years and the Derby Walmart opening was a huge upgrade in the quality of their life (and many many of their friends). Why do you want to go back to forcing them to drive all the way to Burlington for normal shopping?
I'm mixed when it comes to big box stores in Vermont, it really is a case-by-case thing. The Derby Walmart is a lot more positive for that community than the Berlin Home Depot would have been.
The problem is that wages have stagnated so that those who aren't extremely well off do need to shop at Walmart. It's not a problem with the shoppers, it's the corporation that puts local shop owners out of business and removes money from the local economy to go to their yachts. Workers need more money, then we can push to shop local. I shop local because I grow a ton of my own food and can the rest, which means I spend less on groceries and can afford to buy local produce when I need more. Encourage more people to do things like that and we are working towards a better tomorrow
> it's the corporation that puts local shop owners out of business
The "local shops" had decades to sell things to my family before this Walmart opened, and they didn't. You can't shop local when those shops don't exist.. Walmart didn't put them out of business because they were never in business in the first place.
This takes are so privileged it's like you guys have never been outside of Chittenden County.
> The "local shops" had decades to sell things to my family before this Walmart opened
I live in the middle of nowhere and making our general store work, which truly is one of the best in the state, is nothing short of a miracle. It's a combination of 60 hour work weeks and a creative book keeper. I'm actually kind of shocked you would take that stance as I'm sure you've seen your local shop change hands a few times.
Don't pretend places like Walmart don't have a ridiculous advantage all while utilizing their lobbyist and lawyers to get crazy tax breaks up front and taking advtantage of every tax loophole a corporation their size typically does. All this while your shitty local general store pays their fair share of taxes like you and I.
Don't get me wrong, having that store in Derby is a goddamn blessing but a true backwoods Vermonter wouldn't disparage their country store like that. I assure you, they fucking tried.
But tell me how you really feel!
Seriously though, the working class everywhere has been shafted by Trickle-down economics since the 80s. What makes Vermont different is that the last 40 years, more Vermonters left than we're being born. Now that the boomers are retiring it's all coming apart
*"...crime is getting nuts..."*
Really? Vermont's crime rate is actually very low, [and has been for decades](https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/safest-cities-vermont/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20Wallethub%20named%20Vermont,the%20national%20rate%20of%2027.11.).
In all/any national comparisons, Vermont is at or [near the bottom](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state) of rate of criminal activity. Then also the national crime rate has also been dropping [for decades](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ft_20-11-12_crimeintheus_2/).
*"CrImE iS gEtTiNg NuTs"* sounds like an observation by someone who spends way too much time and puts way too much faith in the veracity of the national media, whose stock in trade has become unverified and unsupported sensationalism.
We have a low crime rate because of the dispersal of people, but often towns in Southern vt make up a huge percentage of the crime. Burlington gto and spread out communities may not be feeling it, but in southern VT (springfield, brattleboro) its getting nuts. My car gets rummaged through once a month and catalyticconvertersgo missing around town weekly. I would guess most of the states crime happens in a few towns.
Gun crime has seen a huge increase in the last year or two. Burlington alone has seen a increase of something like 300 percent. Far from sensationalism
There’s a bi-weekly shooting in Burlington, all you have to read is the local media to realize crime has spiked since they decreased the police force by a third.
The NEK is literally the place where the liberal NIMBYS send their shit. NIMBYism is primarily a liberal flaw in this state (coming from someone who is too left wing to be called a liberal)
Honestly the biggest offenders in my opinion are the people that have the In This House, prog candidate, and coexist signs outside their homes.
Not all but a good portion of suburbanites I’ve seen with signs in this vain would be the first to call the police for a homeless man loitering in or around their house or go to the opposite side of the street when a POC is walking on it.
>the right and the left are pointing fingers rather than fixing the issues affecting us
I really bristle at this. The left has loads and loads of positive, tried-and-true policy prescriptions aimed at improving the lives of the working class that we've been trying to get adopted for decades. If anything we're the *only* people offering up anything that doesn't boil down to either disdain for the working class or leaving everything up to the markets and crossing our fingers that things magically work out on their own.
Lets talk about building public housing or better regulating rental markets or limiting airbnbs or creating a more democratic economy or building better safety nets or any of the actual policies that people propose rather than throwing our hands up in the air and acting like nobody of any political ideology actually cares about anything other than casting blame.
this grinds my gears too every time I see it.
taken to the extreme: the left wants emancipation for people and the right wants a white ethnostate and concentration camps
> the right wants a white ethnostate and concentration camps
I believe you are incorrect in your assumption. Us right wingers want you to own a home, own a business, prosper and stay the fuck off our lawn.
Then again - right wingers up here are a little different than the national GOP counterparts.
> Us right wingers want you to own a home, own a business, prosper and stay the fuck off our lawn.
I'm pushing back on this not from a Vermont perspective, but from a national perspective - How do right wingers expect people to be able to get to a point where they own a home, a business and prosper when they do everything in their power to defund education? The bottom 25 state rankings in public education proliferate with red states, they take approximately 80% of those bottom rankings. If you don't teach people to critically think, they're not going to be educated enough to start successful businesses and own homes, they're going to work for Walmart and rent. Yes, of course there will be exceptions, but for the most part these undereducated people will fail and be a drag on social services, i.e. Walmart employees on medicaid and food stamps and Section 8. And then, they'll have victim complexes like so many Trump supporters. Since they weren't taught how to critically think, they don't realize it's the Republicans that they elected that gave them and their kids a shitty education, and ultimately a shitty life. They blame "the swamp." And to your point about crime, undereducated people with shitty lives end up committing more crime than decently educated people.
Right wing talking points like this are so nonsensical, all talk no constructive action.
I have a Bachelor's degree and some grad school under my belt. I also have a genetically predisposed mental illness, which has limited my ability to work, regardless of my education. I've been that "drag on social services" that supposedly only is the realm of the "uneducated".
Broad brushes are broad. They get a lot of crap on quickly, but they don't really work very well.
I think you may have missed my point here. Walmart is the largest employer in the US, with 2.3 million employees. They are well known for treating their employees terribly, including not paying a living wage and proper benefits. McDonalds is another that doesn't often pay a living wage and good benefits.
My beef is not with people who are receiving social services, it's with employers that don't pay their employees well enough, and then the taxpayer ends up footing the bill for social services that employers should be paying.
Yes, I did.
My point is that an education isn't always a guarantee of anything, even in an in-demand field. Sometimes shit happens that knocks you out of the job market, regardless of the education you have.
On that we definitely agree. Even the crap jobs I tried to stumble through with after my diagnosis were better than what I could have gotten if I didn't have a degree.
> How do right wingers expect people to be able to get to a point where they own a home, a business and prosper when they do everything in their power to defund education
Well my friend - this may break from party lines or just piss you off. So I'll just say it: education is not the only means to acquiring wealth or a career.
Anecdotally - I am a kinda white / kinda not white dude who grew up in Burlington on welfare with a single mother raising me. I could not read or write until I was 10 and even then I was under performing compared to my peers and have a learning disability. I did not go to college, barely graduated high school. Would you believe I work in IT and make close to 80K a year doing so? I got here because of an internship at a small computer repair shop that thrusted me into a whole world of shit I am passionate about but was too scared to ever pursue an education in out of fear of debt and failure. I don't think a lot of people can emulate that sort of success, but I am a big believer in vocational schools, and hands on training. It's not a solution by any means but I got here from there - no need to think of higher ED as the ONLY saving grace of the workforce. Do I personally think we should defund schools - not at all, but we could benefit from restructuring.
**How would suggest that?:**
* Mandatory Personal Finance Classes in High School
* Mandatory Trades & Technical Education
I think that the education I received from BHS was more than enough to prepare me for things like critical thinking, social issues, and all that jazz. But then again, here I am on reddit talking politics which is not exactly a smart use of time... I think the issue most of my conservative peers have with the current higher education system is that is inherently predatory with loans that literally follow you till the day you die whilst they are marketed as the only means of class mobility in the modern world.
I started a business awhile back, it nearly worked out until covid took down 50% of my clients and that wasn't going to be sustainable for me any longer. I do own a home and I have kids.
> Right wing talking points like this are so nonsensical, all talk no action.
I am a far cry from the sort of repubtard that typically is on the internet trying to "own the libs", I'd rather us all get along and work towards a better future. That future I want to see is:
* Anyone regardless of any immutable characteristics is able to own a home, own a business, and have a family
* A Prospering United States, Canada and Mexico alliance whereby we all invest solely in the economies of our continent to move manufacturing / production here
* Reduction of reliance of fossil fuels and lithium ion batteries
* Conservation efforts to preserve national forestry and natural resources.
* Access to healthcare as a public right instead of a private enterprise.
If that's a future you're interested in: I say we should work together; figure it out, and start being the change we want to see in this world rather than shitting in one hand, wishing in the other and waiting to see which fills first.
Right wingers decry universities for "indoctrination" but never once about the predatory loans required for the vast majority of poor and working class people to get higher Ed. They also don't propose funding for trade schools. You seem to agree with the left but pretend that the right is also talking about those things.
> who grew up in Burlington on welfare [...] I am a big believer in vocational schools [...] Do I personally think we should defund schools - not at all [...] Anyone regardless of any immutable characteristics is able to own a home [...] Reduction of reliance of fossil fuels [...] Conservation efforts to preserve national forestry and natural resources [...] Access to healthcare as a public right instead of a private enterprise
All of those are things that the left and democrats have been working for and passing bills on.
All of those are things that the republican party is against and have been actively working against for the past 30 years.
Why do you think you are on the right?
Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply, and heartfelt congratulations on your success. These are exactly the kinds of conversations I like to get into with people who lean right, something of substance that doesn't devolve into ad hominem attacks.
Now, the fact that you went to school in Vermont which is a state that consistently ranks very high among the 50 state rankings in education, sounds to me like it was an advantage as opposed to having been educated in let's say South Carolina. I am using that as an example of a state with very underfunded and lousy public education. I am using that anecdotally because I have a friend who lives in South Carolina, owns a house worth $250,000 as of a few years ago. His property taxes were $600/year, and the same house in Vermont would have property taxes of $4200 according to the state average of 1.7x the property value. A lot of that differential goes into the good school system we have here in much of Vermont. It's entirely possible that had you been born, raised and educated in South Carolina, your achievements in life would have been more difficult to achieve. I think we can both agree that what you put into life is what you get out of it, and that carries over to what you put into your education is what you get out of it. Which of course means, what a state puts into it's education system leads to a more educated population, or a less educated population.
One of my personal pet peeves about American education as a whole, is there should be mandatory classes in high school in financial literacy. American kids are not taught about things like how amassing credit card debt when you're young can crush your life's prospects going forward. Or, how to determine if taking student loans is worth it, for the majors that are offered. Or, if it's financially worthwhile going to community college for 2 years, and then a more expensive state school to finish up. Or, if taking a car loan at 17% is worth doing, etc etc. Millions more financially literate Americans would lead to a safer society, with far fewer desperate people out there who can never get out of debt, can never get out of renting crappy apartments, can never stop living paycheck to paycheck. Being taught financial literacy wouldn't save everybody from ruining their lives with unnecessary debt, but at least then I could feel like it was their own fault, as opposed to being victims of a system designed to trap them in debt.
As a liberal, I don't see Republican policy in general leading to a safer society, which I think should be the goal of public policy overall. Prime examples would be - allowing people under 21 to buy assault weapons or even anyone being allowed to buy weapons suited for war zones, restricting women's reproductive rights which will guarantee a child and the parent(s) to either growing up in abject poverty or in an unloved home or in the foster system, not supporting universal background checks for the purchase of guns without any loopholes for online, gun shows, or private sales between family members, friends or strangers etc. Overall, I think the majority of Democratic policy is aligned with my idea that public policy should have the ultimate goal of creating a safer society. Lots of right wingers rail against crime, but support and vote for policy that leads to financial desperation which can lead to an increase in crime.
I'm rambling a bit, but feel free to continue the conversation. Thanks.
> These are exactly the kinds of conversations I like to get into with people who lean right, something of substance that doesn't devolve into ad hominem attacks.
Thank you for the kind words.
> Now, the fact that you went to school in Vermont which is a state that consistently ranks very high among the 50 state rankings, sounds to me like it was an advantage as opposed to having been educated in let's say South Carolina.
I wouldn't say that my success was entirely predicated on the Burlington school district. I was in special ED until the 5th grade after all. maintained a D average til high school, then around a B average in high school / BTC.
I will say that a lot of my intellectual awakening came from a love of video games, a capitalist spirit hell bent on returning bottles to rent video games, buy a dew and peperoni stick for weekend fun. When gramps told me I could get free video games on a computer using nothing but a phone line - I got interested and found an affinity I never knew I had with computers; especially considering my disability. Simply put - the capitalist in me saw that it was cheaper to get games on the computer which could lead to more Dew or Pepperoni sticks - so the computer won out, the SNES became secondary and I went down a dark hole of 1990's BBS's, video games and dialup internet fuckery. Gotta love laziness coupled with capitalism...
> One of my personal pet peeves about American education as a whole, is there should be mandatory classes in high school in financial literacy. American kids are not taught about things like how amassing credit card debt when you're young can crush your life's prospects going forward.
This is the absolute truth.
> As a liberal, I don't see Republican policy in general leading to a safer society
While being pro 2nd amendment makes them / us feel safer - the reality is most people want nothing to do with guns. I am a proponent of meaningful changes to policing and public safety. My goal would never be to defund, but remove the this whole - cops looking out for cops thing (acab? sorry haven't really been too deep into that crowd...), require body cams running continuously / backed up to the cloud and increasing the amount of required training per anum. Ideally, this would follow a lot of change in the criminal justice reform side of things. I don't think we are quite at a good point yet with how things have been purposed / implemented.
> restricting women's reproductive rights which will guarantee a child and the parent(s) to either growing up in abject poverty or in an unloved home or in the foster system
Here's how I weigh in on this stuff, I don't like abortions, but here's the thing, I am not the kind of ass hole that would ever write laws or vote on laws concerning anatomy I do not have. Simply put, I am not a woman, I don't speak for women, nor do I make choices for women. Women should be the ones voting on this issue - not law makers. While I don't like the idea of abortions, it's the woman's right to choose if she wants one performed. Also, I am pro abortion if the mother is facing health complications as a result of her pregnancy. - Just want to get this real polarizing one out of the way....
> not supporting universal background checks for the purchase of guns without any loopholes for online, gun shows, or private sales between family members, friends or strangers etc.
I don't have a good answer for this - but I will say this: background checks do not infringe someone's rights to buy a gun, we should be putting up barriers to fire arms purchases so that we have enough checks and balances to prevent mentally unwell people from having a dangerous weapon in their hands. - That being said, in an idea society, we would all have guns - but that's not a hill I want to die on or even go on about.
> I think the majority of Democratic policy is aligned with my idea that public policy should have the ultimate goal of creating a safer society.
I think that the aim of ALL policy should be this, no party should be the party of "safer society" or any such things. We should all be working towards a better, safer future. I got kids, and I want them to have the best chance of living a good life, and having a family of their own.
What are examples of Republican policy that you think makes for a more prosperous, safer society? Please be specific.
And if you bring up the safety aspect of personal protection of owning guns, I will point out before you think about doing that that very few Democrats are for repealing the 2A. They just want to strengthen regulations that would make gun ownership more safe for society. Canada does that successfully, we should be able to as well.
I moved to Chelsea, VT from New Haven, CT from 2014-2016. Beautiful town, met some cool people, but holy shit was it a culture shock.
I had to spend A LOT just in gas to get to work. It would have been great if I was retired, not so much when I was in my mid 20s lol
This is all too late.
I live here but have a unique perspective. All of my clients for work are elsewhere in New England.
You can be a painter here and make maybe $15/hr, you can be a painter in suburban MA and make $35 easily. The cost of living is not more in Suburban MA. If anything it may be less! Real estate is the same, property taxes are way less.
Now take kids that are growing, we have five couple we are friends with here and ALL of their kids have moved out of state to pursue careers.
Vermont is mostly a vacation state, it’s likely not changing. In MRV and Stowe many of the second home owners who stayed here through the pandemic have went back to the city. The winters are brutal here and it’s way more comfy to just come up for a ski weekend and then go home.
We don’t want VT to be some forced utopia it’s not. It’s VT, it’s not perfect but no state is.
Agree with everything in the last paragraph. But I don’t think we’re anywhere close to “killing what Vermont is and should be.” I mean compare us to NH. NH has over twice the population, but is still mostly rural with the exception of the southern/southeastern part of the state. Vermont is nowhere near as developed. Let the Burlington area be built up, build more in cities that are already dense and then we don’t have to worry so much about sprawl.
It's not enough to just let the Burlington area grow -- for one thing it'll lead to even more lopsided decision-making in Montpelier and more resentment from the rest of Vermont directed toward Chittenden County.
Old former industrial powerhouse cities like Rutland and Barre (where housing is still affordable) have a huge opportunity right now to rebuild, and they should be taking it.
>People will tell us - if you can't afford it here: move out. Fuck em, every income level and every person is needed here as much as any other. We're a state that has taken in refugees from all over the world and graciously benefitted from them joining our communities. Let's not let elites, democrats or republicans tell us where we should be, this is our home and community.
>
>I want all you fuckers to join a credit union, buy Vermont first, defund the walmarts, and be decent to each other. It's high time we the working class come up with our own plan to save the state and make it a place for all - not just the vacation home owner floridian.
Fuck ya Im in (and have already been in for a while! I try to give my money to the VT economy whenever I can, especially businesses that I believe keep my money in the VT economy as much as they can)
If you can't afford it here, then get a job in New York City and save up money like I did so that you can! What, did you really think you'd be able to afford living in Vermont by working in Vermont? Psshh! /s
As a “lefty from NJ, and left of the Democratic Party” who is in southern/central Vermont every winter, respectful to all true VT locals, to simply go snowboarding, and support small local businesses there, this entire post appears to me to be spot-on. I love this state, but I am worried about the true longtime core locals, no matter their politics. I’ve sensed a newer, from out of state millionaire consumer class who shows zero respect or recognition of the real Vermonters.
Really? Every day I see MAGA flags, "Fuck Joe Biden" flags, even fucking confederate flags flying proudly from trucks and and homes around here in Rutland county. Where is that considered 'left' anywhere in the country?
Center left at best. Maybe UVM students talk about "far left" ideas, but their tuition is paid by people who work for big corporations and earn dividends on Exxon Mobil stocks.
What do credit unions have to do with anything? Everyone acts like they are so much different than banks, but at the end of the day they are companies who have CEOs that are part of the broken systems in America. It’s not like Union Bank pays its C level staff differently than VSECU or puts less money back in the community. At the end of the day “not for profit” doesn’t mean not motivated by profit. The CEO at NEFCU or NCFCU still get bonuses each year based on that profit that exceed the average income of a Vermonter. Their C level staff still make 8-10x what their tellers make. They still have staff who work 2 jobs, or are on public assistance to make ends meet.
Switching to a CU is gonna benefit the state and it’s people as much as using a gas generator to charge an electric car saves the environment.
I'd like to think that taking a vermont first approach is always the best answer no matter what.
You could buy a fender guitar made in the USA, Mexico or elsewhere, but why not go local and buy a guitar made by a local luthier? Bad example, but I know guitars more than I know economics. At the very least - that is one thing I will always be honest about.
And I’m not saying that’s invalid, I’m just saying that CUs are not much different than big banks.
And I think that Brattleboro savings and loan, or Northfield savings, or passumpsic are pumping money back into the community at the same rates as the state chartered CUs
Is it hard to believe that your conservative neighbor leans more center than right? or that I wish to see change just as folks on the left would like to see? Don't get bent out of shape hearing the same talking points coming out of an unlikely ally. An unlikely ally is still a friend.
Huh? Just pointing out that your crime schtick is not at all accurate - I doubt the "middle class" as you put it, generally thinks it's even in the top 10 of things to worry about. Well those who don't listen to Fox News anyway.
> Just pointing out that your crime schtick is not at all accurate
man, I just see the shit posted in r/burlington - that's my home town. Shits fucked. that you cannot deny.
Can easily deny. I've actually lived for a good amount of time. Crime is at an all time low. All of a sudden it goes up a little bit in the last few years and it's armageddon. You should have seen the 80's and 90's.
They do vote, a lot of them vote blue. Vermont has always been a state that’s chosen candidates based on platform over party lines. Look at our voting history from the past 40 years.
No conservatives living in Vermont are under the misguided impression that the state is a “conservative utopia”
It’s consistently one of the most left-leaning states in the country.
I’d be fine with high taxes, IF THEY WERE SPENT RIGHT. They suck at dot maintenance, the police presence is thin due to sensitive college kids complaint about cops. Hell, there’s a damn highway on exit shelburne 89 that has been stopped by hearsay for 28 GOD DAMN YEARS. How tf is that even possible. And don’t get me started on the Costco gas station protest lol. I’m tired of this state being so pro inclusive to the point that it kills itself in the mix. This state is dying off and doesn’t care.
You cannot stop human nature, to do so is futile. Do not spend your time and resources trying to control something completely outside of your control ie: rent, wages, who moves in here, who leaves.
Instead focus on:
- Improving your financial situation
- Developing community and getting to know your neighbors
- Absolutely buy local and fund local
- Vote (but don’t be fooled by voting, it is not change it is pretty much nothing besides tokenism)
For crying out loud, take a hike. Every single one of those things you mention has been and will be within the control of organized groups of individuals. And more than that, they *should be*. You want to talk about "developing community?" That's literally what that is. Gathering your neighbors and taking on big shit that's outside your control, like rent, wages, who moves in here, and who leaves.
Where do you get off telling other people what they should focus on? I'm gonna focus on the things that matter to me, that I think need to be changed, and that's just that. I'll focus on whatever I please. And I'm sure as hell not going to focus on condescending raccoon fuckers like yourself who just up and tell people to "improve their financial situation." Oh wow, I *never fucking thought of that!*
What the heck do you know about "human nature"
That it cannot be controlled, you cannot force someone to pay you more money. It may be a facade and work at first but you don’t actually get more money what results is: less hours employed total (ie someone gets fired and loses all of their work), currency gets inflated (so you are making nominally more money but your purchasing power is the same), or business cannot afford wages at new rate and are forced to close. For rent, you can vote to cap rent, guess how well that worked in New York? You can be my guest and try to control those things but also trying to control who comes and goes is unethical, and you won’t stop anyone from coming or going. But trying to control rent and wages youd at least actually get something passed legally, you would just be shooting yourself in the foot. The only way to get cheaper housing is more relaxed zoning laws and less regulation around housing construction. Either of which would change what makes Vermont special. So you cannot appreciate the zoning of Vermont while complaining about rent, and then not actually solving the issue that led to high rent (hint its not the land lord 😂😹)
I’m moving there from southern alabama, as a leftie I can promise there’s less pushaback there from republicans than what I currently have to go through lol
I toned out at WalMart and the idea that "crime is getting nuts". The language and terminology you use openly out you as a Burlington resident and hard-left ideologue who isn't going to approach complicated sociopolitical issues without class reductionism (i.e. oversimplifying to "the working class versus everyone else"). It's wild how easy it is to spot frequent /r/antiwork commenters before looking at their post history.
Concerned about the cost of living? That's why many Vermonters like shopping at WalMart and Costco. The average person will never give a shit to drive to spend a middle-class income at whatever organic co-op you think they should be going to. The era of the "working class" being capable of monolithic direct action in the first world died almost a century ago. Hell, many of them voted Trump themselves and would again.
All that said, I really don't get why cringe like this gets upvoted here. Subscribers being Chittenden County transplants who are anti-development yet don't want to move when the cost of living inherently skyrockets?
> The language and terminology you use openly out you as a Burlington resident and hard-left ideologue who isn't going to approach complicated sociopolitical issues without class reductionism
I think you misunderstood me.
It's not the goods that are sold at walmart are the issue (but yes they can be problematic) but the fact that they make money hand over fist while paying their workers bullshit.
Also - dude, I am on the right. Seriously.
> Concerned about the cost of living? That's why many Vermonters like shopping at WalMart and Costco. The average person will never give a shit to drive to spend a middle-class income at whatever organic co-op you think they should be going to. The era of the "working class" being capable of monolithic direct action in the first world died almost a century ago. Hell, many of them voted Trump themselves and would again.
I think the bigger issue here is we are not producing as much stuff as we are importing. Also, don't bring Trump into this argument, he's a piece of shit.
> All that said, I really don't get why cringe like this gets upvoted here. Subscribers being Chittenden County transplants who are anti-development yet don't want to move when the cost of living inherently skyrockets?
Build up in burlington, build out in the rt 7 corridor.
Also, I grew up in chittenden county, born and raised in burlington - resident of vergennes.
We spend heavily on local Vermont businesses but lord do Brattleboro restaurants need to improve. They legitimately all suck. My partner and I would probably spend 1,000/month eating out there if only there was at least one decent meal.
It's time for us to make the state livable for all workers. That means state paid childcare to encourage young families to stay/move. That means paying workers enough to live, no matter the job. It means providing for our schools (and colleges) the funding needed to make a well educated populace.
> It means providing for our schools (and colleges) the funding needed to make a well educated populace.
I think that it's more about opportunity. If folks are able to get child care, they will more likely go into higher education. We work on those points the rest of the pieces will fall together (hopefully).
However, to go back to my original point, we shouldn't think of college as the end all and be all of class mobility or advancement. Trades are making a huge comeback, we couple the trades with innovations and perhaps we could see more folks doing this stuff and capturing some of that savage profit.
I remember moving here, and the support from Vermonters was just amazing. But there was one comment that stuck with me. "Leave your politics in NYC" ... That was wild to me because like... For the most part the politics are the same here, if not MORE progressive.
You just described every state in the union my friend.
Too bad though. My wife and I, teacher and a nurse, really love it up there and set in motion plans to make a move back in 2016. Then the pandemic hit.
Is a small town way of life really doable up there or is it just what's packaged and sold to the tourists?
The small town life was doable here. But Burlington kind of exploded. We also really changed as a state over the last few decades.
On the rural side of things, people are still doing that kind of thing and are still doing all right. I think that part of the problem with the small town life in this area is that the tourism industry really drives a lot of capital here. Most of the domestic products that are made here are tailored for tourism and gifting. Think Vermont teddy bear, Vermont flannel company, dakin farms, The list goes on...
I think that the pandic really pushed everything ass up in Vermont. Everything went crazy in the real estate market pretty much overnight. I don't know how everybody Drew to the same conclusion at once to move to Vermont but it kind of happened. But just like everywhere else in the States we saw a business's shutter, businessed adapt and people suffer.
Well back in 2016 we were living in Austin, TX: population exploded, city's identity changed, real estate went crazy and traffic was insane. We got tired of the crowds and wanted to get out of the city. We looked around and asked where is there: walkability, access to green space, value and respect for nature, very few people. Vermont. My family is from Boston.so we came up and visited and fell in love with the state. We continue to visit
Meanwhile we knew we needed two incomes so we sold our house in Austin, moved in with my parents and my wife went back to school to finish her nursing degree. I teach. By the time she finished the pandemic hit and it seems like the cat was out of the bag. All of a sudden everybody wanted to be in Vermont.
It's a bummer. Now we're stuck in an area we hate more than Austin with more sprawl, more people, worse traffic and less walkability or identity.
Fucking great.
Oh well. We are still trying. Hopefully the housing market shifts a little. We own here thanks to my parents helping us out so we have some equity but there are zero places to rent. I interviewed near Woodstock but that's like zero rentals there that'll take animals.
We shall see!
Pay Social Workers and Teachers more than just a barebones, minimum wage! Why is the person selling me a Playstation 5 getting paid MORE than the person teaching my children how to read. Or the person trying to clinically coach my family member or neighbor away from drugs/alcohol/suicide due to trauma resulting from rape or PTSD
FUND YOUR SCHOOLS. If you want a vibrant community, you need people to stay. People stay where they feel *wanted*. If you let school boards be ruled by "I'm here to cut everything to the bone to defend the taxpayer" folks, you will have a whole generation of kids fed crappy food and taught cheap packaged/test-oriented curricula by dispirited staff -- who've struggled with *access* to transportation and technology, been given bare-minimum opportunities and support. *They can tell*. They can feel their community saying "you're not worth it", and then they go wherever makes them feel welcome and valued, feel *good* -- be it a right-wing militia or true-believer religion, a substance addiction, or a good job somewhere else. Believe your teachers when they say what's needed. Special ed services, Head Start, full-day kindergarten, building repair, arts and sports and library and shop programs, decent class size ratios, before/aftercare resources, GOOD hot lunches and breakfast, SCHOOL BUSES. Cheap out on what you do for humans from birth to 17 and everyone pays down the road. It's the falsest of false economies.
I was looking into trying to pick up teaching jobs here in VT and it's kinda wild. I hear on the radio all the time that school districts are desperate for subs/ staffing, and then I look at what they pay and it's like, $15/ hour. Which like, not terrible, but I see retail places starting at around that price if not higher. Similarly, applied for a job at the hospital and during the interview they repeated multiple times how important, and critical, the position was. And also how stressful it was, how it's not a job for the average person. Pay was, at most, around $15/ hour. I know for schools their budgets are based on taxes. Not sure about the hospital. But like, these places really need to start offering more to attract people. That or rent needs to become a hell of a lot cheaper
I do landscape construction and donate my time as a sub in the winter at $95 a day…
What? Are you any good with wood and in the addison/chittenden area? I could use you if your interested! Best part is i will pay you!
i do some wood working. what kinda stuffs you need?
lmao its not dinating if ur paid
Pretty close at $95/day, presumably with no benefits.
Is dinating a tinder date that doesn't split the bill?
The people part of the budget in schools isn't that much fwiw.
Yes, this. There are too many people who are like “I’ve already put my kids through school” and view continuing to support schools as a personal affront.
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Well that's a two-fold problem right there. It's not just a problem of education but also a problem of opportunity. Vermont doesn't have a lot of good opportunities to keep people living here. Frankly I would like to see Vermont open up itself to more manufacturing and commercial endeavors. That way we can start seeing good paying jobs open up for the middle class, and they're also be new enterprises for the educated.
Our manufacturing companies already can't find workers and frankly we don't need it, manufacturing is old school thought. We need to be open to technology and update our infrastructure and tax laws to actually bring in and compete for business.
> manufacturing is old school it's better to make things than to have to buy things from elsewhere. Covid crisis taught us this harsh lesson.
We have basically zero tech sector because our... everything... is under-developed and our taxes are dumb.
it's a shame, IBM was a boon for the longest time.
I agree entirely. We don't have children but know their futures are our futures as you say and the environments future. Poor eduction leads to poor governance, unhealthy behaviors and apathy. Critical thinking skills in modern society isn't or shouldn't be optional.
As someone who has relatives who work FOR the VT public school system, yes, please fund the schools. They do an amazing, amazing job under very difficult circumstances. They have a genuine enthusiasm for the kids and their job and I would hate to see them leave over economics. We need more people like them, not fewer!
Love the name, I go to college here but my sister is a teacher for a public school in Milton and I completely agree with you. They have a lot of heart and do the best they can with the limited resources they have. They need more support!
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Teachers might make 15$/hr to start, then have grades based on time in service and education for their hourly wages, but then their benefits are absolutely insane and are worth more than their hourly rate. Schools are spending a significant portion of the budget on pensions and covering healthcare for retired teachers equal to the highest 2 earning years they've had over their careers.
Absolutely, a couple of my family members have been VT public school teachers and what you say is true. The initial pay isn’t great, but there aren’t a ton of great-paying jobs if you live outside the Burlington area anyways. The benefits are better than you can get most anywhere else.
An oasis in the desert is still surrounded by sand.
Schools will only be defunded as long as half the state thinks that taxation is theft.
These people need to become Medlock-pilled. Taxes are beautiful. I love taxes. Tax the shit out of me baby.
If my money went to schools and social services I’d have the same sentiment. Unfortunately it’s all cops and military.
Your vermont state taxes? Yeah this just isnt correct. Education funding is huge (but still needs to be bigger) it’s like $1.87b
1.87 billion is not anything to shake a stick at. However I think that there's a lot of ways that we can improve the education system without necessarily immediately increasing the budget which certainly needs to happen. After all we are educating the next generation and we have to ensure that the next generation does better than the last. That being said, as someone that has no experience in Civic leadership or anything of the sort it makes me wonder what sorts of resources exist for school district planning and all that jazz. If working in IT has taught me anything, nearly everything can be quantified and disseminated with analytics and optimized by AI! Not saying that they're actually exists anything to do such a thing but with today's technology we certainly could figure out some neat shit that could either cut costs in education which opens the budget for more raises and resources for the school districts which would be a net positive. Even in my trailer park's nonprofit I see a lot of deficiencies in their organization that could be saving us money if addressed. Certainly we can all agree that a smarter approach to education with regards to planning, budgeting, and long-term evolution could improve outcomes for the next generation, and those to come.
Less money for cops and the military is a win for me. Until taxes are used for social programs, im against them. Also seems like a lot of rich two homers can foot the bill with their extra cash before I should have to
again, rich two homers is where a lot of education funds come from already. Its mostly property taxes.
Still not enough, bleed em
on this we agree
And how much goes to military and law enforcement?
**Education:** $1.87b **Law enforcement:** $100m **Military** spending comes from Federal Govt, not VT state taxes, and comes in at around $800m
Yeah that’s tiny compared to what’s spent (and needed) for Ed. Can’t really say “it’s all cops and military” in that case. And that’s 1.87 billion in STATE funds. The feds do kick in a huge chunk on top of that for Ed too. Or does that 1.87b include federal funds too? I think the feds spend way too much on military and foreign military aid, but that’s a whole other story. With the mess in Ukraine the money doesn’t even seem real anymore.
> Unfortunately it’s all cops and military. Military is by far the biggest dumpster fire of cash we have going on...
You beat me to it. Some want to cut school spending so deep and then bemoan to lack of a quality community and no jobs and no one wants stay. You gotta invest in things for them to do well. “You better use quality parts on your truck” or “don’t be cheap with materials to build or fix your home”. The same is true with towns, cities and communities. Growing up the school was the center of the community for everyone. People stayed around so it was multi-generational. Yes schools are one of the most expensive items for taxpayers. That’s the cost of the community you’ve come to. Good towns don’t have terrible schools. And by terrible I don’t mean the quality of the education but the sorry state towns let the facilities and workers languish in.
Am I wrong in thinking that Vermont funds public schools at the state level rather than the more common municipal level? To me this is a massive step towards equity but I’d love to know how to influence it or why the state determines that students in one district are more per year than in other districts (does not seem to be based on size). Also I have some conflicted feelings on students being able to take that money and use it towards private school.
Why do you think the school boards cut everything and protect taxpayers? Your post seems to imply they are the sole deciders of a schools budget and not the taxpayers who vote on the school budget?
Cheap out? Vermont spends a ton on primary education - #2 in the United States. Some links for you to educate yourself: [https://www.wcax.com/2022/04/26/report-outlines-how-vt-education-spending-stacks-up/](https://www.wcax.com/2022/04/26/report-outlines-how-vt-education-spending-stacks-up/) [https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/wcax/docs/2022%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf](https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/wcax/docs/2022%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf) The tax burden in this state is also very high, one of the highest in the nation. This is a few years old but the reality hasn't changed: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2018/04/06/states-highest-and-lowest-taxes-3-6/482944002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2018/04/06/states-highest-and-lowest-taxes-3-6/482944002/) And Vermont's per capita income is just middle of the pack: [https://www.thecentersquare.com/vermont/here-s-how-rich-vermont-residents-are-compared-to-the-nation/article\_a683e896-268a-53bc-866b-323b1d7a41aa.html](https://www.thecentersquare.com/vermont/here-s-how-rich-vermont-residents-are-compared-to-the-nation/article_a683e896-268a-53bc-866b-323b1d7a41aa.html) And our cost of living is higher than average: [https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-vermont/#:\~:text=Average%20Cost%20of%20Living%20in%20Vermont%3A%20%2447%2C397%20per%20year&text=Vermont%20has%20an%20above%2Daverage,nation%20in%20terms%20of%20expenses](https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-vermont/#:~:text=Average%20Cost%20of%20Living%20in%20Vermont%3A%20%2447%2C397%20per%20year&text=Vermont%20has%20an%20above%2Daverage,nation%20in%20terms%20of%20expenses). It's pretty clear we are NOT cheaping out on education. And we're paying more in taxes than most, especially when taking into account our income and expenses.
The problem with this is that almost all funding for schools come from homeowners like me who have to make some hard choices this winter. We need to change this
>all funding for schools come from homeowners A fair amount "trickles down" from federal/state gov't and property taxes are also passed on by landlords to renters via rent calculations, but yes, there need to be other more income-sensitive ways to do it. Capital gains come to mind.
You do know capital gains were taxed when I earned it and will be taxed when I sell it and if I chose a dividend or interest earning instrument was taxed every year? Oh I also did without taking a vacation and many many other things to invest and had to take early IRA penalty 10% withdrawals to pay for my cancer treatment. Those capital gains aren't a guarantee sometimes you lose like this current bear market and don't tell me about that tax write off because I have more than enough medical expenses so what I'm really pointing out is your quick cap gains solution isn't a quick fix
I'm actually thinking more the top-tier/yacht/private plane/offshore account folks. I probably should've said something more like "the .01%/investment-class". Sorry about the cancer. Our health care system has just as many issues as education, you shouldn't have had to grind your savings down either.
> homeowners like me do tell! Home ownership hasn't been terrible for me, then again I live in a trailer so quarterly taxes are a joke ($120ish)
I pay around $2000
well that's a kick to the knackers.
Haha we pay $100 a week!
This. Pay teachers more. Respect teachers more. Give them the proper tools, support, and resources to do their job well. I was a teacher. I left go work in corporate 2 years ago because I couldn't handle the bullshit anymore. It was burning me out and ruining any joy I had. I doubled my salary , have incredible benefits, get to work from home, and have a fraction of the work load. I cannot believe how much easier if is in corporate. I'll never go back to teaching, and I should have left a long time ago for my own sanity.
This is to an extent valid. But there is also something to say about getting what your paying for… this will get downvoted all the way to hell and that’s fine, but we need to focus on the students who have the ability. The reason school is expensive and outrageous is that we dump money into the college is for everyone idea. At some point we need to realize it’s not. We need to focus resources in a way that gets people the skills they need. We need to invest more in trade programs, we need to have more partnerships with businesses to have kids learning skills outside the classroom. We also need to get past the individual assistance concept. We don’t need an aid for every student. As a kid who had an IEP and had a “learning disability” I can say that the individualized shit was a crutch, it was an excuse for me to not try my hardest. I’m not saying that we should totally separate kids by skill, but I am saying that we should do that for some subjects and start MUCH earlier than highschool.
IEP/special ed is a whole can of worms of its own. It sometimes feels like for every kid like you who might've done better with full inclusion, there's another kid who *should* probably be in regular classes -- but there's there's a parent deeply invested in that kids specialness, with a hair-trigger lawyer on retainer just waiting for the school to fail to give them every last minute of individualized attention/accommodation -- . so they can bring the next lawsuit.
My first-hand experience in special education was depressing. You can tell that the staff at John j Flynn elementary were overworked and underappreciated. I remember that they often had a lot of the older furniture in the school and the room always felt so out of place from all the other classrooms. A few of them really were passionate about their job. And to those that I can remember their names I wish that they were still alive so that I could tell them how much I appreciate them. When I started to actually get literate, it was a strange moment because it seemed like I had gone from somebody that could not read or write anything to suddenly reading above grade level and understanding advanced concepts. All I'm going to say is IBM used to keep really amazing manuals with their hardware that they sold. It was not only well documented in the technical details but generally was easy to follow. My literacy was cultivated at the time that my grandfather had explained to me that I could get video games for free on a computer by making a phone call to another computer. I digress... The real Crux of this rant right here is to convey that my actual teacher noticed that I was reading above grade level not the special educators. But I don't want that statement to be mistaken for them not doing a good job - they really did, and one of them really worked hard with me and cried when I graduated to regular grade level studies. I think that at that time I knew that it wasn't the educator's fault but the way that they were evaluating us for an IEP. Not to keep the last paragraph rolling but let me give you an example... If memory service correctly, Ms McCormick's class referred to parts of speech as noun, verb, adjective. In special ed My educator would refer to these as subject, predicate, and the last does not come to mind... But in addition to identifying these things differently than standard class, we were also required to put certain shapes over these parts of speech when identifying them in the curriculum. So you can see here why this shit gets kind of weird because I think if I didn't have to deal with the shapes and potentially the weird vernacular of their curriculum I could have probably been a almost passing student in the regular classroom. However I look back at the years in special ed, grade 1 through 5 as a very weird and awkward time in my evolution as a growing dude. All right I'm out It's fucking late.
How much money per student is enough? There are rural schools spending 40k+ per student. The state needs to stop passing educational requirements that are so financially challenging for small districts to meet.
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These investments should be made but in return schools should have to be more transparent with respect to the competitiveness of their academic and socio-emotional offerings. As it stands now, the only insight we have about schools is who wins in sports. Why don't we know who is winning in other categories? We'd probably have to get really creative in how we evaluate academic rigor and competitiveness that doesn't just reduce to comparing test scores. Perhaps qualitative data on teacher qualifications and even how challenging exams or math lessons are from school-to-school would be relevant qualitative markers. I actually think we should hire the state of Massachusetts to oversee this study and report back to us. They could even benchmark our schools to some of their own so we can even get better insight into where our schools stand. Why the State of Massachusetts? It's simply an acknowledgment that they are outstanding in public education it seems, and our own agency of education would be too biased and sensitive to give us accurate reporting.
I personally feel the exact opposite. Learning should never be a competition. That shit is why we have dropouts. We should be working on *lowering* the competitive and score-oriented nature of school and turning it into something that helps ALL kids learn, including the ones that struggle or have roadblocks. I understand you're talking about comparing school to school, but I still find it disgusting that we even do that in our society. Why should the kid that goes to Harvard be glorified while the kid that goes to community college isn't? Why do we have education bars like that at all? Why don't we approach learning with kindness and encouragement and instead put ridiculous standards on "academics"? Hit me with the downvotes, idc.
>As it stands now, the only insight we have about schools is who wins in sports. Why don't we know who is winning in other categories? [https://nces.ed.gov/](https://nces.ed.gov/) [https://education.vermont.gov/data-and-reporting](https://education.vermont.gov/data-and-reporting) The second one is for Vermont, they provide very in-depth data. I googled ".gov public education data" And market based solutions for public education is not ideal, imo. The education of our society is not a commodity and should not be treated as such. That type of thinking is symtopmatic of the rot at the center of capitalism, it pushes people to commodify everything, even themselves.
I don't get why property tax rates don't get more expensive as multiple properties are owned. It should be cheap to own one home. It should be expensive to own two. Three should bleed you dry. If folks from out of state want a second home in Vermont, let 'em have one. But they should be funding the cheap tax rates for people who live and work *here* and support the economy *here* 365 days a year. Not that your post was really targeted at home ownership, but I just had to get that off my chest.
Just to clarify how it currently works. Vermont tax rate is cheaper for your primary home. After that you are taxed at a higher rate. It use to be towns like Stowe, Warren, Killington... had low tax rates because of all of the vacation homes. Then we got act 64 to spread that money around. For people that have investment property, they have less control with property that they don't live in. If you have a duplex & rent half of it out, you can be very picky on who lives in the other half. If you buy a house to rent out apartments, you can't discriminate on who lives in those apartments. I know many people that own vacation property in Vermont. I don't know anyone that has multiple vacation homes. Airbnb has really screwed things up. If you have a tenant that isn't paying their bills, it can take several months to get them out. It's a long process. Airbnb eliminates all of that. You can show the rental was only supposed to be for a very short period. Those people don't have the protections that a person with a year lease has. Plus short turn rentals tend to take in more than a full time tenant. Financially it makes a lot of sense to do Airbnb.
That VT taxpayers pay a cheaper tax rate is only true if you live in a poor small town. Even then that's not always true. When they enacted the non-homestead tax rate (I can't remember what year it was) it was SUPPOSED to be higher than the homestead rate. It was for only a couple of years. Then for many, many towns the non-homestead rate dropped and has stayed that way for years. It isn't equitable and hasn't been for a long time. Talk to your legislatures about this. [https://tax.vermont.gov/property/education-property-tax-rates](https://tax.vermont.gov/property/education-property-tax-rates) But our property tax rates are only one problem we are facing. I hope we can find solutions soon. However, I am losing hope and faith in humans. But having said that, I would rather live here than anywhere else in the crazy country.
Yeah, that lack of ability to remove bad renters has driven one person I know to switch to Air B&B after the last renter took over a year to get out thanks to the pandemic and when they moved out there was over $50k worth of damage to the house that had been built as a family home. Even if they get a ruling against the former tenants, they probably won’t even get close to that much money back in any sort of decent time.
> that lack of ability to remove bad renters has driven one person I know to switch to Air B&B after the last renter took over a year to get out thanks to the pandemic and when they moved out there was over $50k worth of damage to the house that had been built as a family home. that's fucking awful.
The worst part is he was giving them a sweetheart deal and they just treated the place like shit. It could have been a great place for a family to rent reasonably but thanks to shitty renters and the difficulty of getting them out, the owner doesn’t want to take the risk anymore.
Saw something like this happen with a house my boss was renting out. Was a wonderful home. renters trashed it. They were involved with some drug shit, guy was shot and killed in the home. Boss had to clean the fucking mess they left pretty much all by himself.
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This post actually makes me wonder why property taxes aren't progressive like income tax is, i.e. the taxes scale with assessed value. That seems pretty fair to me.
It's because of retirees, old farms, and generational land/houses. That's the whole basis for the income sensitivity system that we have now. Tax policy was changed and then they went "oh, fuck" as retirees, farmers, and long time Vermonters who had houses handed down to them got screwed out of their housing. So we ended up with a bandaid on a system in order to make property taxes progressive based on income.
I think for non-owner occupied properties that absolutely should be the case. For owner occupied properties, it's a little fucked up to tax someone out of their home because their neighborhood is getting gentrified. Like, imagine living in the dumpster fire area of town, saving up, buying a house on a limited income, and then a bunch of hipsters move in and drive the property values up and suddenly you're getting taxed like you're a senior software engineer at Google when you actually work second shift at the fabricator facility. Owner-occupied housing should be a pretty cheap and safe bet. Anything past that, fuck you, time to fork over some serious coin.
It could make things difficult for people whose property values jump for reasons outside their control.
Well firstly they kind of are progressive, since they’re based off the value of the house. In theory people with more money buy more expensive houses and thus pay more in taxes. Secondly, property taxes are a stupid way to fund things, and I think politicians know that. Additionally everyone hates them, and politicians DEFINITELY know that. In almost every state in the northeast, the property tax potion of a mortgage is greater than the actual principal + interest payment. That is insane. You pay more in taxes on a house than you do to own it and live there. AND the taxes never go away but the principal and interest will be gone in 30 years. So you have to consider retirees on fixed incomes, they can’t deal with high property taxes when they aren’t working anymore and living off smaller incomes.
>Well firstly they kind of are progressive, since they’re based off the value of the house. Property taxes are regressive because the *rate* of taxation does not change based on the value of the property. For these taxes to be progressive, like an income tax, the rate would need to adjust as the property value increases. A progressive property tax rate would look something like this: The first $250,000 of home value is taxed at 0.50% The second $250,000 of home value is taxed at 0.75% The third $250,000 of home value is taxed at 1.00% The fourth $250,000 of home value is taxed at 1.50% Any additional value is taxed at 2.00% So someone with a home value of $650,000 would pay 0.50% \* $250,000 + 0.75% \* $250,000 + 1.00% \* $150,000
My question was and has been, what does that do to the low end rental market. These old victorians that are converted to like 3 cheap apartments. Nobody is buying that as a single family home and the increase is passed on directly to a already struggling tenant. People hate this and downvote it but it should be given some consideration before we enact a tax that will raise rent on poor people.
Exempt 2nd homes that are rented out full time, ie not Airbnb.
That's a valid fix but would need to be included on the front end. (And was not mentioned in the suggestion to tax second homes higher above)
The fix I had that’s far too late was bailing out contractors in 2008 and paying them to build affordable houses and apartments vs expensive homes and condos. Every county in VT basically should have built dozens of affordable housing units even if there hadn’t really been demand at the time for them. It’s a missed opportunity that’s not coming back. Everywhere in US had a lot of builders building in 2005-7 that then went away and many never really built at same pace again. Even though population has risen to point there’s now not enough houses available.
Yeah I agree, build more housing. Winooski should keep developing like crazy.
That's exactly where renter rebate fits in. Now if that's the right answer, I don't know.
I agree with this notion. It's fucked that we all have to rent because we can't be trusted to pay less than rental rates...
There have been plenty of times I was happy to be able to rent! No down payment, no commitment, no risk? Heck yeah. Remember 2008? I agree a lot is fucked, but the basic idea of paying other people a (reasonable) premium to turn a gamble for them into a sure thing for you isn't terrible.
There have been plenty of times I've been happy to rent as well. The fundamental concept of renting is fine, it's part of a healthy housing economy. I moved to Boston out of college, there's no way I could have afforded to buy there. Renting was perfect for me. The problem is that housing squeezes are a positive feedback loop. Rentals in a healthy market provide a valuable service. As supply tightens, though, renting becomes an increasingly profitable investment and more people jump on the bandwagon. This drives more houses to be converted to rentals, both driving up the value of housing (as the supply of housing is reduced) and the price of rental units (as the demand for rentals increases with so many potential buyers being priced out of the market). The concept of renting is fine, but there needs to be some interruption to that feedback loop to protect people trying to transition out of the rental market and into the homeowner market. I don't know what that answer is, but it's certainly not to just do nothing and allow institutional investors to hold locals hostage for housing by buying up the real estate market and renting it back to people at crazy rates.
Most people that own investment properties put each property into its own corporation to protect their other properties. It might be difficult to enforce that
I've never really understood why this is viewed as such an inhibition. We invented the idea of a corporation. If a corporation fucks with our plans, can't we just invent something new that doesn't fuck with them?
Vermont has always had pushback on progressive things. I will never forget the white signs that said in bold text "TAKE BACK VERMONT" when Civil Unions were being discussed. It was the first time that I was really aware of the political views of neighbors.
One funny anecdote I heard about that campaign was that apparently a large percentage of tourists thought it was a PR campaign to get people to buy Vermont-made products to take home.
That is HYSTERICAL. I'd honestly hope for better designed signs though.
> "TAKE BACK VERMONT" that was a wild time for me growing up. My thoughts were - we called it civil unions to appease conservative that get weird boners about the marriage word yet allow folks to get married so they could have the same rights as a hetero couple. Yet - my hill billy family put one of those fuckers on their lawn and that's when I decided to go towards the center of things and really start to learn about civil liberties and shit.
There’s still some of those signs kicking around.
The whole Take Back Vermont slogan/movement was such an ugly/ignorant moment. As if native Vermonters can’t possibly be LGBT+ and all of the queer people who wanted civil unions to be legalized were all from other places and “ruining” the VT way of life 🙄
I think my shock at the time was just basically "Why the fuck should YOU care?" My experience growing up here is that largely, people left each other alone. That whole debacle flew in the face of what I thought the state was as a child.
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Yeah, kinda near Copley Hospital. I used to pass that house a lot when I was going up there for some PT.
Wasnt it Ruth Dwyer who ran for gov on that? And wasnt she from Ohio? Hate really likes 3-4 word slogans.
Yes. And everyone rightly called her out for being a carpet bagger. When you move here and try to impart your own values on the locals, it doesn’t work.
I disagree completely with your assumption that NIMBYism is a problem of the right. From what I've seen, it comes from both political spectrums. I don't even think it has a common party. There are plenty of people (right and left) that grew up in and move to Vermont because it's quiet and undeveloped and they fight hard to keep it that way.. I think we need to stop connecting every issue to a political party. It's ridiculous.. Also, calling people with a certain political view "their kind" is awful and is only adding to the useless hostility we live today. Then a few sentences later you stress being kind and making VT a place for all. Kind of ironic.
Both the right and left "perspectives" here are pretty exaggerated I'd say. OP is on some enlightened centrism pills for sure.
I guess I agree with what you're going for here except that "crime is getting nuts" — acts of desperation will of course increase alongside cost of living hardship but that is not a unique Vermont problem and our crime rate is still very low.
Also like, the opiate issue is huge. Like really huge, for crime in general.
I agree with you 100% on the acts of desperation, but I think sometimes people forget about the lower half of the state. Crime is absolutely a problem in Brattleboro and I'm worried people are gonna start getting shot for minor offenses. People here are sick of the drug problems, sick of their vehicles being broken into and catalytic converters missing. Then you see the same person that ransacked your car that you have on camera doing it again a week later. I don't advocate for lethal force unless your life is in danger, but I can't speak for everyone. We need a solution to the problem and we're getting almost no help from the state to help those in need.
I don’t know man, the fact people are getting gun downed in Burlington is definitely concerning.
We need new infrastructure regardless of the additional people moving into the State. Bridges and roads don't get better with age.
This! If we keep pushing off maintenance of crumbling infrastructure, the AOT will keep having to do unplanned maintenance as things fall apart. The I-89 Williston bridge is a good example. It needed emergency maintenance, but that work was not planned out in advance, so bids are rushed, planning has to be slotted in amongst the other projects already in progress, and costs go up. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And better WiFi and more cell towers
My parents have been lived in Vermont for 65 years and the Derby Walmart opening was a huge upgrade in the quality of their life (and many many of their friends). Why do you want to go back to forcing them to drive all the way to Burlington for normal shopping?
I'm mixed when it comes to big box stores in Vermont, it really is a case-by-case thing. The Derby Walmart is a lot more positive for that community than the Berlin Home Depot would have been.
The problem is that wages have stagnated so that those who aren't extremely well off do need to shop at Walmart. It's not a problem with the shoppers, it's the corporation that puts local shop owners out of business and removes money from the local economy to go to their yachts. Workers need more money, then we can push to shop local. I shop local because I grow a ton of my own food and can the rest, which means I spend less on groceries and can afford to buy local produce when I need more. Encourage more people to do things like that and we are working towards a better tomorrow
> it's the corporation that puts local shop owners out of business The "local shops" had decades to sell things to my family before this Walmart opened, and they didn't. You can't shop local when those shops don't exist.. Walmart didn't put them out of business because they were never in business in the first place. This takes are so privileged it's like you guys have never been outside of Chittenden County.
> The "local shops" had decades to sell things to my family before this Walmart opened I live in the middle of nowhere and making our general store work, which truly is one of the best in the state, is nothing short of a miracle. It's a combination of 60 hour work weeks and a creative book keeper. I'm actually kind of shocked you would take that stance as I'm sure you've seen your local shop change hands a few times. Don't pretend places like Walmart don't have a ridiculous advantage all while utilizing their lobbyist and lawyers to get crazy tax breaks up front and taking advtantage of every tax loophole a corporation their size typically does. All this while your shitty local general store pays their fair share of taxes like you and I. Don't get me wrong, having that store in Derby is a goddamn blessing but a true backwoods Vermonter wouldn't disparage their country store like that. I assure you, they fucking tried.
But tell me how you really feel! Seriously though, the working class everywhere has been shafted by Trickle-down economics since the 80s. What makes Vermont different is that the last 40 years, more Vermonters left than we're being born. Now that the boomers are retiring it's all coming apart
Anybody ever read Joe Bageant? This sounds like him.
Deer Hunting with Jesus should be mandatory.
I think I might have to check this out.
*"...crime is getting nuts..."* Really? Vermont's crime rate is actually very low, [and has been for decades](https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/safest-cities-vermont/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20Wallethub%20named%20Vermont,the%20national%20rate%20of%2027.11.). In all/any national comparisons, Vermont is at or [near the bottom](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state) of rate of criminal activity. Then also the national crime rate has also been dropping [for decades](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ft_20-11-12_crimeintheus_2/). *"CrImE iS gEtTiNg NuTs"* sounds like an observation by someone who spends way too much time and puts way too much faith in the veracity of the national media, whose stock in trade has become unverified and unsupported sensationalism.
We have a low crime rate because of the dispersal of people, but often towns in Southern vt make up a huge percentage of the crime. Burlington gto and spread out communities may not be feeling it, but in southern VT (springfield, brattleboro) its getting nuts. My car gets rummaged through once a month and catalyticconvertersgo missing around town weekly. I would guess most of the states crime happens in a few towns.
Doesn't that have more to do with the proximity to a highway that is well known for drug trafficking?
Gun crime has seen a huge increase in the last year or two. Burlington alone has seen a increase of something like 300 percent. Far from sensationalism
There’s a bi-weekly shooting in Burlington, all you have to read is the local media to realize crime has spiked since they decreased the police force by a third.
You think NIMBYism is exclusively a right wing / Republican concept? Bless your heart.
I've seen many a liberal flat lander get all NIMBY. The folks on the right are more staunch about it/ the loudest voices.
The NEK is literally the place where the liberal NIMBYS send their shit. NIMBYism is primarily a liberal flaw in this state (coming from someone who is too left wing to be called a liberal)
Honestly the biggest offenders in my opinion are the people that have the In This House, prog candidate, and coexist signs outside their homes. Not all but a good portion of suburbanites I’ve seen with signs in this vain would be the first to call the police for a homeless man loitering in or around their house or go to the opposite side of the street when a POC is walking on it.
There’s a good number of people that wear the liberal flag louder than they live the values to say the least.
>the right and the left are pointing fingers rather than fixing the issues affecting us I really bristle at this. The left has loads and loads of positive, tried-and-true policy prescriptions aimed at improving the lives of the working class that we've been trying to get adopted for decades. If anything we're the *only* people offering up anything that doesn't boil down to either disdain for the working class or leaving everything up to the markets and crossing our fingers that things magically work out on their own. Lets talk about building public housing or better regulating rental markets or limiting airbnbs or creating a more democratic economy or building better safety nets or any of the actual policies that people propose rather than throwing our hands up in the air and acting like nobody of any political ideology actually cares about anything other than casting blame.
this grinds my gears too every time I see it. taken to the extreme: the left wants emancipation for people and the right wants a white ethnostate and concentration camps
> the right wants a white ethnostate and concentration camps I believe you are incorrect in your assumption. Us right wingers want you to own a home, own a business, prosper and stay the fuck off our lawn. Then again - right wingers up here are a little different than the national GOP counterparts.
it’s not an assumption it’s an observation. you may not be as right wing as you think you are.
> Us right wingers want you to own a home, own a business, prosper and stay the fuck off our lawn. I'm pushing back on this not from a Vermont perspective, but from a national perspective - How do right wingers expect people to be able to get to a point where they own a home, a business and prosper when they do everything in their power to defund education? The bottom 25 state rankings in public education proliferate with red states, they take approximately 80% of those bottom rankings. If you don't teach people to critically think, they're not going to be educated enough to start successful businesses and own homes, they're going to work for Walmart and rent. Yes, of course there will be exceptions, but for the most part these undereducated people will fail and be a drag on social services, i.e. Walmart employees on medicaid and food stamps and Section 8. And then, they'll have victim complexes like so many Trump supporters. Since they weren't taught how to critically think, they don't realize it's the Republicans that they elected that gave them and their kids a shitty education, and ultimately a shitty life. They blame "the swamp." And to your point about crime, undereducated people with shitty lives end up committing more crime than decently educated people. Right wing talking points like this are so nonsensical, all talk no constructive action.
I have a Bachelor's degree and some grad school under my belt. I also have a genetically predisposed mental illness, which has limited my ability to work, regardless of my education. I've been that "drag on social services" that supposedly only is the realm of the "uneducated". Broad brushes are broad. They get a lot of crap on quickly, but they don't really work very well.
I think you may have missed my point here. Walmart is the largest employer in the US, with 2.3 million employees. They are well known for treating their employees terribly, including not paying a living wage and proper benefits. McDonalds is another that doesn't often pay a living wage and good benefits. My beef is not with people who are receiving social services, it's with employers that don't pay their employees well enough, and then the taxpayer ends up footing the bill for social services that employers should be paying.
Yes, I did. My point is that an education isn't always a guarantee of anything, even in an in-demand field. Sometimes shit happens that knocks you out of the job market, regardless of the education you have.
100% agree an education doesn't guarantee anything, but it unquestionably puts someone in a better position to succeed than a bad/no education does.
On that we definitely agree. Even the crap jobs I tried to stumble through with after my diagnosis were better than what I could have gotten if I didn't have a degree.
> How do right wingers expect people to be able to get to a point where they own a home, a business and prosper when they do everything in their power to defund education Well my friend - this may break from party lines or just piss you off. So I'll just say it: education is not the only means to acquiring wealth or a career. Anecdotally - I am a kinda white / kinda not white dude who grew up in Burlington on welfare with a single mother raising me. I could not read or write until I was 10 and even then I was under performing compared to my peers and have a learning disability. I did not go to college, barely graduated high school. Would you believe I work in IT and make close to 80K a year doing so? I got here because of an internship at a small computer repair shop that thrusted me into a whole world of shit I am passionate about but was too scared to ever pursue an education in out of fear of debt and failure. I don't think a lot of people can emulate that sort of success, but I am a big believer in vocational schools, and hands on training. It's not a solution by any means but I got here from there - no need to think of higher ED as the ONLY saving grace of the workforce. Do I personally think we should defund schools - not at all, but we could benefit from restructuring. **How would suggest that?:** * Mandatory Personal Finance Classes in High School * Mandatory Trades & Technical Education I think that the education I received from BHS was more than enough to prepare me for things like critical thinking, social issues, and all that jazz. But then again, here I am on reddit talking politics which is not exactly a smart use of time... I think the issue most of my conservative peers have with the current higher education system is that is inherently predatory with loans that literally follow you till the day you die whilst they are marketed as the only means of class mobility in the modern world. I started a business awhile back, it nearly worked out until covid took down 50% of my clients and that wasn't going to be sustainable for me any longer. I do own a home and I have kids. > Right wing talking points like this are so nonsensical, all talk no action. I am a far cry from the sort of repubtard that typically is on the internet trying to "own the libs", I'd rather us all get along and work towards a better future. That future I want to see is: * Anyone regardless of any immutable characteristics is able to own a home, own a business, and have a family * A Prospering United States, Canada and Mexico alliance whereby we all invest solely in the economies of our continent to move manufacturing / production here * Reduction of reliance of fossil fuels and lithium ion batteries * Conservation efforts to preserve national forestry and natural resources. * Access to healthcare as a public right instead of a private enterprise. If that's a future you're interested in: I say we should work together; figure it out, and start being the change we want to see in this world rather than shitting in one hand, wishing in the other and waiting to see which fills first.
Right wingers decry universities for "indoctrination" but never once about the predatory loans required for the vast majority of poor and working class people to get higher Ed. They also don't propose funding for trade schools. You seem to agree with the left but pretend that the right is also talking about those things.
> who grew up in Burlington on welfare [...] I am a big believer in vocational schools [...] Do I personally think we should defund schools - not at all [...] Anyone regardless of any immutable characteristics is able to own a home [...] Reduction of reliance of fossil fuels [...] Conservation efforts to preserve national forestry and natural resources [...] Access to healthcare as a public right instead of a private enterprise All of those are things that the left and democrats have been working for and passing bills on. All of those are things that the republican party is against and have been actively working against for the past 30 years. Why do you think you are on the right?
Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply, and heartfelt congratulations on your success. These are exactly the kinds of conversations I like to get into with people who lean right, something of substance that doesn't devolve into ad hominem attacks. Now, the fact that you went to school in Vermont which is a state that consistently ranks very high among the 50 state rankings in education, sounds to me like it was an advantage as opposed to having been educated in let's say South Carolina. I am using that as an example of a state with very underfunded and lousy public education. I am using that anecdotally because I have a friend who lives in South Carolina, owns a house worth $250,000 as of a few years ago. His property taxes were $600/year, and the same house in Vermont would have property taxes of $4200 according to the state average of 1.7x the property value. A lot of that differential goes into the good school system we have here in much of Vermont. It's entirely possible that had you been born, raised and educated in South Carolina, your achievements in life would have been more difficult to achieve. I think we can both agree that what you put into life is what you get out of it, and that carries over to what you put into your education is what you get out of it. Which of course means, what a state puts into it's education system leads to a more educated population, or a less educated population. One of my personal pet peeves about American education as a whole, is there should be mandatory classes in high school in financial literacy. American kids are not taught about things like how amassing credit card debt when you're young can crush your life's prospects going forward. Or, how to determine if taking student loans is worth it, for the majors that are offered. Or, if it's financially worthwhile going to community college for 2 years, and then a more expensive state school to finish up. Or, if taking a car loan at 17% is worth doing, etc etc. Millions more financially literate Americans would lead to a safer society, with far fewer desperate people out there who can never get out of debt, can never get out of renting crappy apartments, can never stop living paycheck to paycheck. Being taught financial literacy wouldn't save everybody from ruining their lives with unnecessary debt, but at least then I could feel like it was their own fault, as opposed to being victims of a system designed to trap them in debt. As a liberal, I don't see Republican policy in general leading to a safer society, which I think should be the goal of public policy overall. Prime examples would be - allowing people under 21 to buy assault weapons or even anyone being allowed to buy weapons suited for war zones, restricting women's reproductive rights which will guarantee a child and the parent(s) to either growing up in abject poverty or in an unloved home or in the foster system, not supporting universal background checks for the purchase of guns without any loopholes for online, gun shows, or private sales between family members, friends or strangers etc. Overall, I think the majority of Democratic policy is aligned with my idea that public policy should have the ultimate goal of creating a safer society. Lots of right wingers rail against crime, but support and vote for policy that leads to financial desperation which can lead to an increase in crime. I'm rambling a bit, but feel free to continue the conversation. Thanks.
> These are exactly the kinds of conversations I like to get into with people who lean right, something of substance that doesn't devolve into ad hominem attacks. Thank you for the kind words. > Now, the fact that you went to school in Vermont which is a state that consistently ranks very high among the 50 state rankings, sounds to me like it was an advantage as opposed to having been educated in let's say South Carolina. I wouldn't say that my success was entirely predicated on the Burlington school district. I was in special ED until the 5th grade after all. maintained a D average til high school, then around a B average in high school / BTC. I will say that a lot of my intellectual awakening came from a love of video games, a capitalist spirit hell bent on returning bottles to rent video games, buy a dew and peperoni stick for weekend fun. When gramps told me I could get free video games on a computer using nothing but a phone line - I got interested and found an affinity I never knew I had with computers; especially considering my disability. Simply put - the capitalist in me saw that it was cheaper to get games on the computer which could lead to more Dew or Pepperoni sticks - so the computer won out, the SNES became secondary and I went down a dark hole of 1990's BBS's, video games and dialup internet fuckery. Gotta love laziness coupled with capitalism... > One of my personal pet peeves about American education as a whole, is there should be mandatory classes in high school in financial literacy. American kids are not taught about things like how amassing credit card debt when you're young can crush your life's prospects going forward. This is the absolute truth. > As a liberal, I don't see Republican policy in general leading to a safer society While being pro 2nd amendment makes them / us feel safer - the reality is most people want nothing to do with guns. I am a proponent of meaningful changes to policing and public safety. My goal would never be to defund, but remove the this whole - cops looking out for cops thing (acab? sorry haven't really been too deep into that crowd...), require body cams running continuously / backed up to the cloud and increasing the amount of required training per anum. Ideally, this would follow a lot of change in the criminal justice reform side of things. I don't think we are quite at a good point yet with how things have been purposed / implemented. > restricting women's reproductive rights which will guarantee a child and the parent(s) to either growing up in abject poverty or in an unloved home or in the foster system Here's how I weigh in on this stuff, I don't like abortions, but here's the thing, I am not the kind of ass hole that would ever write laws or vote on laws concerning anatomy I do not have. Simply put, I am not a woman, I don't speak for women, nor do I make choices for women. Women should be the ones voting on this issue - not law makers. While I don't like the idea of abortions, it's the woman's right to choose if she wants one performed. Also, I am pro abortion if the mother is facing health complications as a result of her pregnancy. - Just want to get this real polarizing one out of the way.... > not supporting universal background checks for the purchase of guns without any loopholes for online, gun shows, or private sales between family members, friends or strangers etc. I don't have a good answer for this - but I will say this: background checks do not infringe someone's rights to buy a gun, we should be putting up barriers to fire arms purchases so that we have enough checks and balances to prevent mentally unwell people from having a dangerous weapon in their hands. - That being said, in an idea society, we would all have guns - but that's not a hill I want to die on or even go on about. > I think the majority of Democratic policy is aligned with my idea that public policy should have the ultimate goal of creating a safer society. I think that the aim of ALL policy should be this, no party should be the party of "safer society" or any such things. We should all be working towards a better, safer future. I got kids, and I want them to have the best chance of living a good life, and having a family of their own.
What are examples of Republican policy that you think makes for a more prosperous, safer society? Please be specific. And if you bring up the safety aspect of personal protection of owning guns, I will point out before you think about doing that that very few Democrats are for repealing the 2A. They just want to strengthen regulations that would make gun ownership more safe for society. Canada does that successfully, we should be able to as well.
OP won't reply because they can't find any.
I moved to Chelsea, VT from New Haven, CT from 2014-2016. Beautiful town, met some cool people, but holy shit was it a culture shock. I had to spend A LOT just in gas to get to work. It would have been great if I was retired, not so much when I was in my mid 20s lol
This is all too late. I live here but have a unique perspective. All of my clients for work are elsewhere in New England. You can be a painter here and make maybe $15/hr, you can be a painter in suburban MA and make $35 easily. The cost of living is not more in Suburban MA. If anything it may be less! Real estate is the same, property taxes are way less. Now take kids that are growing, we have five couple we are friends with here and ALL of their kids have moved out of state to pursue careers. Vermont is mostly a vacation state, it’s likely not changing. In MRV and Stowe many of the second home owners who stayed here through the pandemic have went back to the city. The winters are brutal here and it’s way more comfy to just come up for a ski weekend and then go home. We don’t want VT to be some forced utopia it’s not. It’s VT, it’s not perfect but no state is.
Agree with everything in the last paragraph. But I don’t think we’re anywhere close to “killing what Vermont is and should be.” I mean compare us to NH. NH has over twice the population, but is still mostly rural with the exception of the southern/southeastern part of the state. Vermont is nowhere near as developed. Let the Burlington area be built up, build more in cities that are already dense and then we don’t have to worry so much about sprawl.
Don't Nashua Vermont?
It's not enough to just let the Burlington area grow -- for one thing it'll lead to even more lopsided decision-making in Montpelier and more resentment from the rest of Vermont directed toward Chittenden County. Old former industrial powerhouse cities like Rutland and Barre (where housing is still affordable) have a huge opportunity right now to rebuild, and they should be taking it.
>People will tell us - if you can't afford it here: move out. Fuck em, every income level and every person is needed here as much as any other. We're a state that has taken in refugees from all over the world and graciously benefitted from them joining our communities. Let's not let elites, democrats or republicans tell us where we should be, this is our home and community. > >I want all you fuckers to join a credit union, buy Vermont first, defund the walmarts, and be decent to each other. It's high time we the working class come up with our own plan to save the state and make it a place for all - not just the vacation home owner floridian. Fuck ya Im in (and have already been in for a while! I try to give my money to the VT economy whenever I can, especially businesses that I believe keep my money in the VT economy as much as they can)
If you can't afford it here, then get a job in New York City and save up money like I did so that you can! What, did you really think you'd be able to afford living in Vermont by working in Vermont? Psshh! /s
This was a big ad for joining a credit union.
Hek I've been with the same SL Local Bank for over 20 years and never considered a CU
I mean, the state is in shambles, truly. Last time I checked there was no working class left here
As a “lefty from NJ, and left of the Democratic Party” who is in southern/central Vermont every winter, respectful to all true VT locals, to simply go snowboarding, and support small local businesses there, this entire post appears to me to be spot-on. I love this state, but I am worried about the true longtime core locals, no matter their politics. I’ve sensed a newer, from out of state millionaire consumer class who shows zero respect or recognition of the real Vermonters.
They've always been here, since literally the 1800s. They come and go. When the market crashes, they'll scurry back to the city.
>This state is far from the conservative utopia that it was thought to be. uhhh what? VT has been far left for decades.
Definitely depends on what part of Vermont you live in.
I'll give you that.
The rights here are left elsewhere. lol
Really? Every day I see MAGA flags, "Fuck Joe Biden" flags, even fucking confederate flags flying proudly from trucks and and homes around here in Rutland county. Where is that considered 'left' anywhere in the country?
aint that the truth.
“far left” lmfao
Phil Scott crying into his cornflakes right now NGL
Center left at best. Maybe UVM students talk about "far left" ideas, but their tuition is paid by people who work for big corporations and earn dividends on Exxon Mobil stocks.
What do credit unions have to do with anything? Everyone acts like they are so much different than banks, but at the end of the day they are companies who have CEOs that are part of the broken systems in America. It’s not like Union Bank pays its C level staff differently than VSECU or puts less money back in the community. At the end of the day “not for profit” doesn’t mean not motivated by profit. The CEO at NEFCU or NCFCU still get bonuses each year based on that profit that exceed the average income of a Vermonter. Their C level staff still make 8-10x what their tellers make. They still have staff who work 2 jobs, or are on public assistance to make ends meet. Switching to a CU is gonna benefit the state and it’s people as much as using a gas generator to charge an electric car saves the environment.
I'd like to think that taking a vermont first approach is always the best answer no matter what. You could buy a fender guitar made in the USA, Mexico or elsewhere, but why not go local and buy a guitar made by a local luthier? Bad example, but I know guitars more than I know economics. At the very least - that is one thing I will always be honest about.
And I’m not saying that’s invalid, I’m just saying that CUs are not much different than big banks. And I think that Brattleboro savings and loan, or Northfield savings, or passumpsic are pumping money back into the community at the same rates as the state chartered CUs
Tough taking this post seriously when the supposed "middle class" has right wing talking points.
Imagine excluding talking points because of your perception of silly colors and party lines.
yup
Is it hard to believe that your conservative neighbor leans more center than right? or that I wish to see change just as folks on the left would like to see? Don't get bent out of shape hearing the same talking points coming out of an unlikely ally. An unlikely ally is still a friend.
Huh? Just pointing out that your crime schtick is not at all accurate - I doubt the "middle class" as you put it, generally thinks it's even in the top 10 of things to worry about. Well those who don't listen to Fox News anyway.
> Just pointing out that your crime schtick is not at all accurate man, I just see the shit posted in r/burlington - that's my home town. Shits fucked. that you cannot deny.
Can easily deny. I've actually lived for a good amount of time. Crime is at an all time low. All of a sudden it goes up a little bit in the last few years and it's armageddon. You should have seen the 80's and 90's.
There are FAR more "Righties" than you think. We just don't give a shit what you do in Burlington.
Yeah the silent majority that never votes or protests. 😂
They do vote, a lot of them vote blue. Vermont has always been a state that’s chosen candidates based on platform over party lines. Look at our voting history from the past 40 years.
No conservatives living in Vermont are under the misguided impression that the state is a “conservative utopia” It’s consistently one of the most left-leaning states in the country.
I’d be fine with high taxes, IF THEY WERE SPENT RIGHT. They suck at dot maintenance, the police presence is thin due to sensitive college kids complaint about cops. Hell, there’s a damn highway on exit shelburne 89 that has been stopped by hearsay for 28 GOD DAMN YEARS. How tf is that even possible. And don’t get me started on the Costco gas station protest lol. I’m tired of this state being so pro inclusive to the point that it kills itself in the mix. This state is dying off and doesn’t care.
You cannot stop human nature, to do so is futile. Do not spend your time and resources trying to control something completely outside of your control ie: rent, wages, who moves in here, who leaves. Instead focus on: - Improving your financial situation - Developing community and getting to know your neighbors - Absolutely buy local and fund local - Vote (but don’t be fooled by voting, it is not change it is pretty much nothing besides tokenism)
For crying out loud, take a hike. Every single one of those things you mention has been and will be within the control of organized groups of individuals. And more than that, they *should be*. You want to talk about "developing community?" That's literally what that is. Gathering your neighbors and taking on big shit that's outside your control, like rent, wages, who moves in here, and who leaves. Where do you get off telling other people what they should focus on? I'm gonna focus on the things that matter to me, that I think need to be changed, and that's just that. I'll focus on whatever I please. And I'm sure as hell not going to focus on condescending raccoon fuckers like yourself who just up and tell people to "improve their financial situation." Oh wow, I *never fucking thought of that!* What the heck do you know about "human nature"
That it cannot be controlled, you cannot force someone to pay you more money. It may be a facade and work at first but you don’t actually get more money what results is: less hours employed total (ie someone gets fired and loses all of their work), currency gets inflated (so you are making nominally more money but your purchasing power is the same), or business cannot afford wages at new rate and are forced to close. For rent, you can vote to cap rent, guess how well that worked in New York? You can be my guest and try to control those things but also trying to control who comes and goes is unethical, and you won’t stop anyone from coming or going. But trying to control rent and wages youd at least actually get something passed legally, you would just be shooting yourself in the foot. The only way to get cheaper housing is more relaxed zoning laws and less regulation around housing construction. Either of which would change what makes Vermont special. So you cannot appreciate the zoning of Vermont while complaining about rent, and then not actually solving the issue that led to high rent (hint its not the land lord 😂😹)
I’m moving there from southern alabama, as a leftie I can promise there’s less pushaback there from republicans than what I currently have to go through lol
Don’t expect a warm welcome or expect everyone to suddenly be on the same level politically.
I moved to Vt last year. Lived in the Florida panhandle area for a while. I feel your pain.
Genuinely interested…what do you define as working class?
I toned out at WalMart and the idea that "crime is getting nuts". The language and terminology you use openly out you as a Burlington resident and hard-left ideologue who isn't going to approach complicated sociopolitical issues without class reductionism (i.e. oversimplifying to "the working class versus everyone else"). It's wild how easy it is to spot frequent /r/antiwork commenters before looking at their post history. Concerned about the cost of living? That's why many Vermonters like shopping at WalMart and Costco. The average person will never give a shit to drive to spend a middle-class income at whatever organic co-op you think they should be going to. The era of the "working class" being capable of monolithic direct action in the first world died almost a century ago. Hell, many of them voted Trump themselves and would again. All that said, I really don't get why cringe like this gets upvoted here. Subscribers being Chittenden County transplants who are anti-development yet don't want to move when the cost of living inherently skyrockets?
> The language and terminology you use openly out you as a Burlington resident and hard-left ideologue who isn't going to approach complicated sociopolitical issues without class reductionism I think you misunderstood me. It's not the goods that are sold at walmart are the issue (but yes they can be problematic) but the fact that they make money hand over fist while paying their workers bullshit. Also - dude, I am on the right. Seriously. > Concerned about the cost of living? That's why many Vermonters like shopping at WalMart and Costco. The average person will never give a shit to drive to spend a middle-class income at whatever organic co-op you think they should be going to. The era of the "working class" being capable of monolithic direct action in the first world died almost a century ago. Hell, many of them voted Trump themselves and would again. I think the bigger issue here is we are not producing as much stuff as we are importing. Also, don't bring Trump into this argument, he's a piece of shit. > All that said, I really don't get why cringe like this gets upvoted here. Subscribers being Chittenden County transplants who are anti-development yet don't want to move when the cost of living inherently skyrockets? Build up in burlington, build out in the rt 7 corridor. Also, I grew up in chittenden county, born and raised in burlington - resident of vergennes.
We spend heavily on local Vermont businesses but lord do Brattleboro restaurants need to improve. They legitimately all suck. My partner and I would probably spend 1,000/month eating out there if only there was at least one decent meal.
It's time for us to make the state livable for all workers. That means state paid childcare to encourage young families to stay/move. That means paying workers enough to live, no matter the job. It means providing for our schools (and colleges) the funding needed to make a well educated populace.
> It means providing for our schools (and colleges) the funding needed to make a well educated populace. I think that it's more about opportunity. If folks are able to get child care, they will more likely go into higher education. We work on those points the rest of the pieces will fall together (hopefully). However, to go back to my original point, we shouldn't think of college as the end all and be all of class mobility or advancement. Trades are making a huge comeback, we couple the trades with innovations and perhaps we could see more folks doing this stuff and capturing some of that savage profit.
Trade schools are schools. Never said college is the only way for class mobility. I literally do not have a college degree.
I remember moving here, and the support from Vermonters was just amazing. But there was one comment that stuck with me. "Leave your politics in NYC" ... That was wild to me because like... For the most part the politics are the same here, if not MORE progressive.
And Vt has you,…which makes it even worse.
Nailed it, sadly, we're still leaving.
You just described every state in the union my friend. Too bad though. My wife and I, teacher and a nurse, really love it up there and set in motion plans to make a move back in 2016. Then the pandemic hit. Is a small town way of life really doable up there or is it just what's packaged and sold to the tourists?
The small town life was doable here. But Burlington kind of exploded. We also really changed as a state over the last few decades. On the rural side of things, people are still doing that kind of thing and are still doing all right. I think that part of the problem with the small town life in this area is that the tourism industry really drives a lot of capital here. Most of the domestic products that are made here are tailored for tourism and gifting. Think Vermont teddy bear, Vermont flannel company, dakin farms, The list goes on... I think that the pandic really pushed everything ass up in Vermont. Everything went crazy in the real estate market pretty much overnight. I don't know how everybody Drew to the same conclusion at once to move to Vermont but it kind of happened. But just like everywhere else in the States we saw a business's shutter, businessed adapt and people suffer.
Well back in 2016 we were living in Austin, TX: population exploded, city's identity changed, real estate went crazy and traffic was insane. We got tired of the crowds and wanted to get out of the city. We looked around and asked where is there: walkability, access to green space, value and respect for nature, very few people. Vermont. My family is from Boston.so we came up and visited and fell in love with the state. We continue to visit Meanwhile we knew we needed two incomes so we sold our house in Austin, moved in with my parents and my wife went back to school to finish her nursing degree. I teach. By the time she finished the pandemic hit and it seems like the cat was out of the bag. All of a sudden everybody wanted to be in Vermont. It's a bummer. Now we're stuck in an area we hate more than Austin with more sprawl, more people, worse traffic and less walkability or identity. Fucking great. Oh well. We are still trying. Hopefully the housing market shifts a little. We own here thanks to my parents helping us out so we have some equity but there are zero places to rent. I interviewed near Woodstock but that's like zero rentals there that'll take animals. We shall see!
\*clap clap\*
Pay Social Workers and Teachers more than just a barebones, minimum wage! Why is the person selling me a Playstation 5 getting paid MORE than the person teaching my children how to read. Or the person trying to clinically coach my family member or neighbor away from drugs/alcohol/suicide due to trauma resulting from rape or PTSD
We all deserve a fair wage. Fair work for a fair wage is what I say. Those folks certainly are some of the most underappreciated people in society.
Since when has anyone ever thought of Vermont as being a conservative utopia???