We’ve got Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy, and Howard Dean’s from here, too. For kicks, I subscribe to Bernie’s email newsletter, and in his latest he petitioned us for our woeful stories of our situation in the midst of the collapsing middle class.
Well, property taxes here in Vermont are among the highest in the nation, despite stringent environmental and population-density regulations. Now, Vermont is attempting to impose its own emissions standards, more stringent than the federal ones. This is on top of the state legislature’s continual soaking of Vermont Yankee’s nuclear power plant and opposition to its expansion plans, and on top, too, of its recent decision to prohibit sales of certain kinds of wood and pellet burning household heater/boilers. Hydroelectric provides some of the state’s power (around 20%, I believe), and there are wind-farm projects in the works, experiencing the typical NIMBY resistance.
Corporate taxes are high, as well. It’s true that there are many compensations to living in Vermont, but that means that there’s not a lot of business here, and that wages are low. Like Wisconsin, the state has a good public school system; like Wisconsin, only more pronounced, the state has no way of keeping many of those young people after they graduate from the University of Vermont.
Good partisan socialist that he is, Bernie sees this as a reflection of corporate greed enabled by the federal government and the Bush White House in particular. So far, he hasn’t answered my response theorizing it might have something to do with state tax policy.
UPDATE: As d2d points out in the comments, below, the Guv hasn’t been too helpful in this, either.
weather’s good here today too!
Don’t leave out the governor. He’s popular you know and a Republican and hasn’t done jack-shit except hire his cronies and put them in high-paying positions like head of Transportation (Douglas’s campaign director) and our roads are getting worse as a result.
New Hampshire’s property taxes got us Vermonter’s beat by a half. And their roads are just as bad.
But those badass big trucks that local and state govt funds up in the Poor Adirondacks makes them roads look a lot prettier than ours. What gives? Them New Yorkers have high taxes and good roads and CNY is booming now. And the City’s taking our kids away. UVMers are pouring down there…every UVM grad I know (not that many) has gone to NYC to get a ‘real job’. Even the guy that could’ve gone to the Iowa’s writer’s school (better ‘n Breadloaf), gone to NYU. (don’t know why?) Mention that we’re about second to last in ranking for state funding of higher education. Read that, Governor?
i’m going, i’m going. now.
And let them Democrats study Bernie Sanders for awhile and Republicans too…how he does it.
New Hampshire has no sales or income taxes. The comparison is ridiculous.
Texas says thank you. Don’t ever change, Vermont.
a stop by: Padro, maybe you missed that I said “property” taxes— I pay Vt state taxes…they’re so small after paying my Federal taxes, I laugh and throw them a few more bones as the taxes are so puny. (one quarter of fed. income tax and of course no soc.sec. tax…the big kahuna of taxes for most people which is funding all the Reagan/Bush deficits btw._) I even have those wildlife fund license plates which cost more to fund the wildlife fund. (A gal I dated briefly looked askance at that plate on my old volvo, while her new Volvo didn’t have ’em out of her ‘conservative’ principals…as she dumped her poor husband after she failed in business and went bankrupt but got a new Volvo out of it. She worked at Dartmough/Hitchcock. So maybe my wildlife Kestrel plates are also a good luck badge keeping me outta trouble.
Yikes, Kestrel green VT plates, Volvo or Suby, with maybe a 01.30.08 sticker and Bernie sticker (neither on mine though) would make any large SUV driver cry.
Property taxes have a somewhat voluntary aspect as it’s dependent if you have a huge custom home on a lake or in a trailer in a squalid ‘park’. But NH’s are big time as that’s how they pay for the schools and roads etc. A mere hunting camp on one acre in the woods can be 5000 intaxes a year! Vermont’s high but nothing like that.
http://www.retirementliving.com/RLstate3.html#VERMONT
What are New Hampshire sales and income taxes? There are none.
Don’t forget that IT’S FUCKING FREEZING there for about half of the year. A perfect place for DD, I think. He can’t be out contaminating everyone elses environment.
Vermont is a great place for people that live in more productive areas to pop in, look at the leaves, and go. As far as accomplishing anything, not so much. Also, It’s so caucasian, that all the libs there can talk about diversity and never have to do a damned thing about it. Again, a perfect place for someone like DD.
So what, Property taxes are huge…kind of makes one less willing to invest in property there. Second homers can out source their taxes too if their living where ever or like Florida. (some Vermonter’s pull that scam too. Have a small condo or a rental in Florida and get all your state income taxes annulled while living in Vermont or NH. Some military vets keep phony addresses in Florida in order to avoid state income taxes.
So why are you ignoring Property taxes, Pablo? Education taxes in NH are 2.24 per thousand in NH and about 1.25 per thousand in VT. municipal taxes are in addition but somewhat lower and their are surtaxes upon better off communities to fund lessor income school districts but my estimate of better than half for same property in either state is about correct. Retired? Just keep you old P.O. box in another state for the income taxes.
Chamber of Commerce types pull this argument in every state that has taxes higher than some Southern backwater states like ol’ Miss. Boilerplate.
– dd is a Vermonter. Explains a lot. Ayaa’
Vermont’s oppressive tax system betrays their kids is the point I think. And then they foist those kids on the rest of the nation to finish raising. It’s very sad when you’re just starting out and you find out the state you’ve lived all your life doesn’t want you.
Yeah, hf, Joseph Smith, the Profit (sic) and Bring’em Young were both borne in Vermont btw.
u can be a little kinder for our Vermont friend, Dan. But I am not native to here. Cleveland born, So.Cal bred, Utah college and younger adulthood, and Vermont later. Let’s not let Me be the role model here, hey?
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie….go let your winger flags wave high: he beat a popular IrishAmerican multimillionaire who’d started a company (somewhat dishonestly imo) selling medical billing software. Bernie’s just a poor former hitchhiker from Brooklyn and he keeps winning landslides in Conservative Vermont. (still is mostly, just you get you image from rightwing media…)
Here in Atlanta, we can’t take a whiz without soiling the shoes of northern transplants, come down in search of a better or at least warmer life. When they complain that our area lacks this, that, and the other, someone has to remind them that they moved here because they don’t want to pay taxes.
And I don’t offhand know of another part of the country other than here, where outsiders move in and feel at perfect liberty to sneer at the natives. McGehee excepted, of course.
I sneer at the natives here in California a lot. They’re really really stupid is why. Except for Jennifer Aniston. They don’t even know I’m doing it half the time.
You can bet if I ended up living in New York City I’d do plenty of sneering at the natives.
I just wouldn’t make eye contact while doing it.
The fact they’re still there is a pretty strong indicator.
(Nobody tell my brother I said that.)
I was in Vermont once. Rocks and grouchy white people, mostly.
“Bernie’s just a poor former hitchhiker from Brooklyn and he keeps winning landslides in Conservative Vermont. (still is mostly, just you get you image from rightwing media…)”
That doesn’t make him any less of a paleo-socialist and a Grade AAA nutjob. Judging from his rhetoric, every morning when he wakes up it’s still Groundhog Day 1936.
Having said this, Bernie-Boy must not have been always “poor”–he got a B.S. from the University of Chicago, which was, and still is, private, located in Hyde Park (y’know, where Obama lives), and wasn’t exactly cheap even in 1964 when Sanders graduated.
Hmmmm.
@ datadave
“Property taxes have a somewhat voluntary aspect as it’s dependent if you have a huge custom home on a lake or in a trailer in a squalid ‘park’. But NH’s are big time as that’s how they pay for the schools and roads etc. A mere hunting camp on one acre in the woods can be 5000 intaxes a year! Vermont’s high but nothing like that.”
What the fuck are you talking about dumbass?
$5,000 a year? For a hunting camp on one fucking acre? You’re completely full of shit. Ok I call total fucking bullshit on this. I grew up in New Hampshire and no fucking way does a hunting fucking camp on one fucking acre cost $5,000 dollars a fucking year.
You’re a fucking liar you total asshat.
New Hampshire property tax table in a Word document
Even Claremont, NH, only has a total of $32/$1,000 assessed. A 1 acre piece of property in NH goes for around $20k. This means if you owned 1 acre in Claremont, with the highest overall property tax in New Hampshire, you’d pay $640 a year.
“Corporate taxes are high, as well. It’s true that there are many compensations to living in Vermont, but that means that there’s not a lot of business here, and that wages are low.”
I’m not sure what that means as applied to Ben and Jerrys…
Though it doesn’t matter much to me as a I’m a “what would you do for a Klondike Bar” kind of guy.
Ben and Jerrys is owned by Unilever. They’re a Dutch/British corporation. They also make Hot Pockets, which have a lot of sodium.
Oh. Nevermind. It’s Nestle what owns the Hot Pockets. I get them mixed up sometimes.
Well yea, Happy, but I was thinking along the lines of perceptions, wages, cost of ingredients, retail pricing, and actual value (as compared to my Klondike bars, or Edys, or Breyers, or …
Oh. This reminds me of the other day when I left three cases of Clif bars at the Costco checkout and didn’t get them cause I noticed they were made in Berkeley. Fuck that I thought to myself as I waited in line at Costco.
what a bunch of liars you are….for one thing the camp I was looking at was livable. It was a house….and could be lived in if one wanted and of course that’s worth something. Now 640 bucks a year for an acre w/o even a building is pretty damn steep. Thx, for the research, di*khd.
one acre w/o septic and a driveway….yes is pretty worthless…at 20K that’s really steep and who’d want it? A buildable lot for 20 K now I know you’d. be a liar. but I can find that in CNY fairly easy.
“Having said this, Bernie-Boy must not have been always “poorâ€Â–he got a B.S. from the University of Chicago, which was, and still is, private, located in Hyde Park (y’know, where Obama lives), and wasn’t exactly cheap even in 1964 when Sanders graduated.”
he had an academic scholorship, is from a poor but hardworking family of Eastern Euro-Jewish ancestry, father worked in a paint store and mom and dad bickered about money a lot making Bernie and his brother Larry (who lives in England) fairly sensitive to money matters. Tried for Harvard I think too but only made it to U of Chi but then that’s a pretty good school.
jeesh, seems like every successful company in America is being bought off by Europeans or Canadians. Another not reported fact in VT too…most the companies are being snagged up by Euros, Canucks or combines backed w/ Chinese money. Thx to the weak dollar.
I grew up in New Hampshire that explains the bad manners.
Maybe when Ardsgaine gets that Mr. Fusion working we can go back and convince the idiots to let New Hampshire have that mountainous wasteland to their west.
That way Howard Dean would have to settle for being a cranky town councilman in upstate New York.
#28
Yep. And making payrolls too.
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