At last, the penny has dropped! After years of Chicken-Little-style lamentations about Vermont’s “aging population,” the Free Press is finally recognizing a cup half-full.
The headline reads: “Age Wave Brings Jobs.”
Well, of course it does. We’ve been saying that over here on GMD for years.
Enough of the perennial belly-aching of Art Woolf, the Douglas administration, and even the Shumlin echo; all of which would have us believe that without some miracle of deregulation, people in Vermont would go the way of the Catamount.
“Something has to be done about our aging population,” they would moan.
As a member of that aging demographic with a firm grasp of the inevitable, I think to myself with some alarm, “…And how the hell do you propose to do that?”
The predictable answer always comes straight from the Republican playbook: reduce taxes on corporations and the wealthy, slash regulations, replace working landscapes with box stores and trendy cityscapes.
This, we are told, will “create” jobs, and young people will then be eager to move here.
Yeah, sure; ‘nothing like moving across country to take a minimum wage job at Walmart and live in a place that looks exactly like the place you came from, only colder.
Finally, the Freeps has got it right: knowing and valuing our current population as the potential market it represents is the way to chart a course for economic prosperity and long term vitality in Vermont.
A coordinated effort by Vermont to develop rich and innovative ways to serve that market will not only enhance the quality of life for aging Vermonters; but it will also create jobs and new revenue for the state.
The people who are attracted to the state to serve its valued older population will bring professional and entrepreneurial skills. Many will choose to settle here and raise their families precisely because of the ways in which the quality of life in Vermont differs from that of their home states.
The state will get a valuable infusion of youth and we need not follow the Catamount into extinction.
All of those old people and rural landscapes everyone has been so eager to “do something” about? They really are assets we can take to the bank.
So put away that shotgun, Henry. It’s time to set Grandma on the front porch.
Hardwick just approved a Dollar General! I am sure that this will bring hordes of 20-somethings into Vermont to work for a rapacious company for minimum wage at never more than 30 hours a week, while having to keep a schedule open for random hours in order to prevent them from taking the required second minimum wage job they need just to pay the rent.
Thank goodness the State of Vermont has such generous ‘welfare’ services for the intentionally-kept poor so that the investment group that owns Dollar General can have their business subsidized by the taxpayer.
You should have heard the Conservatives in town praising Dollar General bringing ‘jobs’ to Hardwick. They have NO CLUE how much tax money they have to pay so that Dollar General can steal even more money from Vermonters.
Perhaps the Vermont Legislators could craft a business tax with progressively higher rates based upon the number of employees who require public assistance.