I’ve read and heard one of the keys to the Phil Scott vision for the state’s future is increasing the number of 25-45 year-olds who live in Vermont. Now Scott doesn’t supply many specifics for meeting his goal and enticing this age group to Vermont, but in comments to the Burlington Free Press he indicated he believes helping a company feel more confident by way of various tax incentives should be a big part of it – or maybe that’s the key to all his plans.
But there are other solutions to this puzzle. And here are samplings from a short list (lifted from here ) of policy suggestions that might realistically incentivize the desired demographic (and other age groups) Scott claims he wants to woo to the Green Mountain state:
a) Offer a higher wage. Yes, yes, wages are so 20th century, but The Kids Today have a strange affinity for them. Maybe it’s nostalgia. […]
b) Good health insurance. […] Silly Kids Today.
c) Retirement benefits. […] They’ve been told their whole lives that Social Security just won’t be there for them so they need an alternative. Blame whoever keeps telling them that (shhh!!!!).
d) On the job training. […]
e)Job Security. The Kids Today would like some assurances that their jobs might be around a few months hence. […]
Oh, but implementing any of those would take a bit of leadership, and Scott’s business buddies would squawk a lot. 
But let’s be fair to Scott’s key solution – business-friendly tax policy – it might be just the thing 25-45 year-olds are into.
And I am probably not alone in recalling those times long ago, when we were still young, meeting up with friends on a Saturday afternoon and making plans to head out on the town that evening, in search of a little “business certainty, a tax incentive” or if we got really lucky “a tax exemption.”
Hilarious! Great pic.
Phil Scott for Governor 2016
How low can you go?
The perennial argument by Republicans that, if we keep giving more and more tax breaks to big companies, somehow that will translate to prosperity for the “little people” has one huge problem: No matter how much we were to strip away from company taxes; no matter how much we would give them in ‘incentives,’ there will always be a dozen states with the capacity to offer them much more…especially those state that either have an exponentially greater population through which to distribute the load relieved from the shoulders of industry and the ones that simply invest nothing in their population’s well-being. I have a friend in Alabama who can tell you what life is like in one of those states.
The reality is that we have to find other, more creative ways, to retain our younger population…and we have to decide what we want to sacrifice in order to grow the population, if that is what we think is necessary. We can’t have the beautiful, bucolic Vermont that many people value, and tourists want to visit, if we pack another half-a-million souls onto her verdant flanks.
Corporate welfare is not the answer.
I must agree Sue. However VT has become the Alabama of the northeast for other reasons with strings pulled behind the scenes sleepy southern backwater style as in EB5 for *just one* of the many scandals we would never know about unless having access to Green Mountain Daily who was the first to report much of the scandalous activity here in our quiet little state, Seven Days & VTDigger, and blogs such as TheVPO each having a slightly different perspective, filling in the maaany blanks, erasing the invisible redactions the MSM now infamous for, anyone relying upon birdcage liners for news is in the dark.
We have a slimmed-down version of Boss Hogg for a governer complete with the likes of Pat Moulton & Larry Miller (there’s others) ever-shifted to the next criminal undertaking buried deep in the heart of our “pristine” environmentally creepy state with an undeserved reputation for purity as evidenced by such things as blooming algae just for one. Just read Stoughton Pond reportedly closed when summer swimming for area folks & fams still in full swing due to blooming algae.
Our state has been damaged. Paint has peeled, sheen has vanished from the luster, facade is in disrepair, with cracks & other signs of rot noted.
This is the legacy of part-time governor Peter Shumlin, who has spent easily 1/2 of the six years living the good life, travelling with luxury acoomodations on the public dime to parts unknown, laughing about us, most of who are, or were supporters along with Jonathan Gruber to a governors conference about his plans to get everyone in his stinking pool of mismanaged healthcare with its non-functioning hundreds-of-millions exchange.
Is there anyone who even begins to compare with the corruption VT has kinown under the Peter Shumlin regime? Personally cannot remember any.
Problem is VT has gone waaay too far in the nanny-state direction. Much of it is totally unnecesary. This is what a ten year veto-proof majority & six years of one party rule has brought us. Douglas must be having quite a laugh.
Unsure about this but a glance at the numbers seems to reveal VT state budget has doubled or nearly so in this time, far in excess of state GDP or national growth. When our leaders spend money like drunken sailors at some point there must be a little belt tightening. I see it as similar to our own household budgets & believe most Vermonters do also. So when we see out-of-contol spending with little to show for it and sticker-shocking unaffordable items somethings got to give.
Next to Shummy, Scott pales by comparison even given the flaws. Not a good thing b/c once the bar is lowered which is also evident on national level, simply raising the bar is seen as an accomplishment rather than making progress, improving and excelling. We need to go to zero-based budgeting imo to truly fix this mess.
“Unsure about this but a glance at the numbers seems to reveal VT state budget has doubled or nearly so in this time, far in excess of state GDP…”
If we look at what we raise and spend (excluding Federal funds), the story is not at all what the Republicans would have you believe. See the graphs from JFO.
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/jfo/appropriations/VT%20State%20Approps%20compared%20to%20income.pdf
Not the Republicans Mr Hoffer and numbers don’t lie, nor based on political party loyalty. Methinks there’s much more to this than meets the eye. Interestingly, bipartisan number crunchers such as well-respected Tom Pelham receive little to no disagreement with their publicized crunches which express the reality of where we’ve gone & where we’re headed.
Personally do not have the expertise to crunch the numbers, but using third-grade math, nothing more than fractions and process of elimination, was able to predict that VT, with a population the size of a medium-sized city such as Memphis, could not afford single payer, or much less what we have now. And Shummy lied, just as Obama did by saying it would cost *far less*, one of maaany whoppers both utter with pathological ease.
It was, however, that big-bad Republican Wendy Wilton who offered her personal number-crunch when no one else would, which was exacting. Why didn’t anyone else including Dems come forward or did I miss something.
Bureaucrats infamously seem to find ever more clever ways to conceal the true numbers as well as true meaning which is the actual import here. And the self-perpetuated structural deficit is still there along with the annual emergency funds needed to “fix” it. And, *miraculously*, the fix always makes it in but is never actally fixed here in alice-in-wonderland VT.
And the Ponzi-like Medicaid secret-slush created by our leaders & billed to us, including the now completely corrupt hospitals, concealed by blaming the mythological cost-shift as the numbers skyrocketed, and millions upon millions went unaccounted for, disappearing into their “balanced budgets”- not an easy task.
We have now discovered, courtesy of VTdigger & Erin Mansfield the truth. But with GMCB headed up by french-fry Al Gobeille who never saw a hospital-devised scheme to steal public funds he didn’t love, the numbers can now rocket with ease with only the sky as the limit as the taxpayer chokes on the fumes.
I think we all can agree that the state budget nearly *doubling* at a pace which does not correspond with the rate of growth is of grave concern. Fact that Dems were at the helm also significant. So, does it it include or exclude the tax-payer funded federal matching funds — which also in wonderland-reality do not match — in fact cost is greatly in excess.
I see that the establishment choices for Potus & gov are not running on the are-you-better-off-than-you-were-four-years-ago. There’s a good reason for this — there were next to no examples. Any successes or supposed accomplishments were not offset by the downside. And both will significantly raise taxes. Which is why I jumped from the frying pan to a less hotter frying pan.
This commentary expresses the sentiment of the leftwing political exodus leaving the elitist mentality of the party establishment, and tho personally voting Dem for quite a while, whose values I can no longer share as they do not represent the common man or worker, unless a union member, the party was built upon:
http://vtdigger.org/2016/09/08/spear-henry-case-vermonts-democratic-leaders/
Wow. Strong views, but you did not (cannot) refute the data I linked to. With respect, your statement was inaccurate and your anger doesn’t change that.
Huh? What anger and what inaccuracy. Comments I made are pointed but any inaccuracy not refuted in your reply. Views are based upon news sources such as VTdigger, and judging from comment sections, far from alone.
Answer to my question, that is whether the public/federal funding is being counted as income, looks like a yes but in the form of taxpayer funds pouring invisible coal on the Ponzi-like stealth scheme Medicaid expansion has become. Heroin for healthcare & hospitals, with mechanism baked into their budgets. If practice continues, will extend inflated cost into the future.
While infusing the state with taxpayer-funded revenue, has caused VT to spend what appears to be a 1:1 match of federal funds, a huge stealth increase in the Medicaid budget used for other things. So by enabling wastefulness in the form of overtreatment by encouraging blanket medical testing & diagnostics for *everyone* regardless of family history or health of the individual under the guise of “preventative medicine” aka expanded coverage.
And if sources used correct, it is disturbing that not much, if any of the funds have resulted in promised savings for healthcare plan users despite the subsidies. Saddled with a dysfunctional mandate, a cost higher than brand new car ownership or mortgage, but receiving no true benefit due to the exorbitant deductible. Exception being the lucky few with gold or silver cadillac plans.
Heroin-like artifice allows states to misuse Medicaid funds for things which it was never used for in the past, if unaccounted for, could result in double-dipping if wasted on items previously covered by other revenue sources. Creates dependency which inflates cost.
Medicaid expansion by some estimates, completely negates any savings Which also explains why some states resisted expansion as it comes with looming sticker-shock.
Sources
This expose by Erin Mansfield for VTdigger highlights allowing of expanded Medicaid funds to be used for items previously earmarked by other funding sources helpfully includes charts & graphs:
https://vtdigger.org/2016/04/03/medicaid-by-the-numbers-money-increasingly-supporting-state-government-other-health-programs/
Another niche site provided by VTdigger to inform the public, an invaluable tool for anyone interested in getting to the bottom of what’s taking place in VT healthcare scene:
http://vtdigger.org/majorprojects/medicaid-by-the-numbers/