By David Flemming
Vermont is falling behind the rest of the United States economically. Many Vermonters have been well aware of this for a while now. But news of our lackluster economy has reached the shores of the United Kingdom.
The Economist, published in London, England, is a left-leaning magazine. It recently published an article entitled: “The road not taken: As wages grow across America, one state is left behind.” Any guesses? Yup. Vermont.
The author writes, “on both a per-hour and per-week basis, Vermont has seen the weakest wage growth of any state in the past decade, despite a rapid rise in the minimum wage and low unemployment. Real wages remain lower than they were when the last recession ended. What has Vermont got wrong that much of the rest of America has got right?”
Notice how they mention “a rapid rise in the minimum wage” in the same breath as “real wages remain lower.” That’s not possible unless you raise the minimum wage and employers are forced to cut back hours, resulting in less pay per week.
The article concludes that “weak earnings growth is in part the product of a relatively weak economy. In the past decade Vermont’s gdp has grown at two-thirds the rate of America’s. Critics point to a mountain of red tape and regulation. The state comes close to the bottom of various indices of ‘economic freedom’ produced by libertarian think-tanks. These may be rough and ready (ie: crude but effective) but, when it comes to the regulation of land, small-government types may have a poi.”
And, yes, I bring this up in the week our legislators voted to both increase the minimum wage and “reform” Act 250 by making it more expensive, complicated, and uncertain to comply with on purpose.
Sometimes all it takes is for a legislator or neighbor to hear something from an objective voice to change their mind. The Economist has given Vermonters as objective an insight as they are likely to find. Before Vermont can move its economy forward, a sizable number of us will have to realize the true costs of overregulation.
David Flemming is a policy analyst for the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.
You could beat the leftist fascist cabal upside the head with a 2×4 and they wouldn’t get it.. no room for
reality in their pea brains stuffed with Trump hate and leftist AGENDA…
The liberal progs don’t see the VT problems in economics because they don’t want to. They’re agenda by their own admissions is to equalize everyone in the state, even if it bankrupts it. They are going to give the citizens, in house produced, green, renewable energy even if they won’t be able to afford it. They are focused on building their own utopian world just as Hitler tried. He had his own ideas and it mattered not who disagreed because he purged them from his Utopia.
their plan is not technically feasible, and they are all too stupid to get it. .
Vermont’s ” Lackluster Economy ” gets noticed 3,000 miles away in London, England, It seems
the only ones that are not aware of this fact are Vermont’s Legislators, Liberal in politics it’s a
political cancer to the state !!
Wake up people, vote these flatlanders out.
Until people like yourself wake up and stop blaming everyone else but yourselves for the problems in VT, change for the better will never happen. I have been listening to locals complain about flatlanders for 14 years. They blame us for the negative direction the State is going, but welcome refugees they will be supporting with their tax dollars. The locals I know either lean to the Extreme Left or they don’t get out and vote these Progressives out. They love to complain and blame “flatlanders” though. One thing I have noticed is that the Right in VT do not stick together and there are a lot of RHINOS out there.
A lot of the flatlanders you speak of have moved here to get away from the negative changes they saw in our homelands. One thing we didn’t do was label outsiders and newcomers or not welcome our neighbors and make them feel comfortable in their new surroundings. I wouldn’t like it if Omar bought the house next door to me, but I would still be kind to my new neighbor and I wouldn’t throw a label on her back because her ancestors didn’t go back ten generations.
If this issue is so obvious that it can be spotted 3000 miles away, why oh why can’t the folks in Montpelier who can it are so oblivious of the need to improve the economy in Vrrmont????
Oh, so Britain thinks we are idiots. I cannot dispute that, because we do elect idiots. We import most, but not all, of them and then we elect them. They raise taxes, reduce freedom, and transfer our rights to the state. I do not know why, but I suspect our schools, rom elementary to college, have failed to teach our children civics, history, and logic.