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Actually. we have friends in NC and 40% is probably close. They live just outside Raleigh and he's a raleigh Durham police officer.The house they bought was about 40% less than an equivalent one here and their property taxes about 1/5 of what they'd pay here. Utilities and food are cheaper too. And sorry, no hut in the woods. IT's a newer 4 bedroom colonial in a beautiful neighborhood.
I love Vermont too Paul, but let's not try and make it something it's not. It's a tourist state with lot's of low paying service jobs. We have a lot of out of state homeowners with vacation homes (2 in my neighborhood alone). The mega homes around here are generally owned by wealthy out of staters. I know someone who caretakes for some of them and they make a lot of money. They pay their caretaker more than many vermonters make in a year.
I'd love to retire here and go south in the winter. I love Vermont summers. I can afford too but many cannot. My property taxes are $7500 a year plus heating oil plus Vermonts higher income taxes. An equivalent home in NC (I get regular emails from a real estate co in NC) is about 3/5 the price of mine. Property taxes are about $2000 on that house. So every year I'm in retirement I save about $7000 cash plus have money in the bank from selling my house and paying cash for the new one.
Lower income vermonters can stay in Vermont and just get by or move and live much easier. The sad part is many would choose to retire here cold and all but just can't financially. Something needs to change before we just become a playground for the rich. In many areas of Vermont it feels like we're already there.
Vermont, and the Northeast in general, is an expensive area to live. However, I don't think your friends' costs are representative of Raleigh-Durham. According to this site, Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed, the cost of living is 7.398% lower in Raleigh than in Burlington. Believe me, if the cost of living were 40% lower in the South and jobs were available, there would be a mass exodus from the Northeast and the population north of the Mason-Dixon line would collapse.
There are income and cost variations all over the country, and all I'm saying is that some places are worse than Vermont and some are better in these respects. I happen to have lived for many years in a more expensive area that makes real estate here look like a bargain and overall value not bad at all. From where I'm sitting, I have great views of the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks with hardly a house in sight. This house is twice as big as the one we had in Illinois and cost 25% less. If the same land were near Chicago, I'd be looking at condominiums lining the mountains instead of trees, and all the fields would have rows of McMansions instead of crops. It's all relative to what two things you compare. Vermont isn't an industrialized state and has no large cities, which means the income options here are going to be limited. This isn't a good state for getting rich, and I prefer it that way.
Paul, with all due respect, your experience appears to be no more representative of living in Vermont than you claim harpoon's is of the friend in NC.
If you come to Vermont with money, sure you can live a good life if you pick the right area. This is why Americans retire to Costa Rica - if you are from the US, it's cheap. If you are from CR, those cottages are might expensive.
There are stories about once a week in the Globe about some yuppies who moved from MA to VT to live an idyllic life in the mountains in some quaint location. This week it's the couple living in 2400 sq ft who paid $20,000 for an infrastructure to live off the grid. That same $20,000 would pay to keep 20 Vermont families from freezing through the winter, but this family gets featured in the Globe is if they are doing something admirable.
Don't get me wrong, it's a free country, and if yuppies from wealthy states move here and want to spend their money on things that native Vermonters cannot even remotely afford, that is certainly their right. The fact remains that if you have grown up here, unless you get out at the earliest opportunity, your options are generally to take low wage jobs at a ski resort or similar, or end up on welfare. It's pretty much a given that the smart kids leave. Vermont's population is aging, and not because retirees from all over the US move here.
This is a gross generalization, but Vermont is increasingly made up of natives who don't have the ambition, smarts or education to better their situation, and transplants who think Vermont should be their personal state park with no industry and who can afford an infrastructure that bankrupts the locals. This was not always true. Vermont used to be a state where someone willing to learn a trade could live well. First the shops moved south, then to China. Vermont has that much in common with states in the rust belt. However, we also have an extremely hostile business climate in Vermont that is driving businesses and jobs out of the state. This is hurting the tax base and shifting the tax burden to individuals.
And to anyone who is going to start up with me about how I am "paranoid" or "insane" please let me state that I grew up here, left in 1975, moved back to start a business in 2002, and in 2006 interviewed approx 30 manufacturing companies in VT and NH as part of a USDA /RBEG survey so I have facts to back up my claims.
My out of state neighbors think it's cheap here as do most of their friends. Of course most of them have incomes in the six figure range and come from Boston, NYC, and Toronto. They register their cars here because that's cheaper. They marvel at how cheap labor is here for their maids, lawn guys, carpenters and plumbers. They have nicer 2nd homes than most Vermonters first and only homes.
My wife and I make a great living, have a nice home, and are comfortable. I wish that for all Vermonters. It would be easy for me not to care, after all, I've got mine.To say that Vermont is no place to get rich and you like it that way ignores the plight of many hardworking Vermonters who endure low wages AND high taxes with little opportunity to better themselves.It ignores the exodus of young people from this state who want more. But I guess if there were more decent job opportunities in this state, many service jobs would have to pay more and that might upset tourism.
If you have money, Vermonts a great place.If you're among the working poor in Vt, not so much. Why can't we provide opportunities for Vermonters AND retain it's character. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
And for what it's worth, NC has a Large population of New Englanders. Retirees have been flocking there for years as an alternative to FL.
Paul, with all due respect, your experience appears to be no more representative of living in Vermont than you claim harpoon's is of the friend in NC.
Obviously I don't have as much first-hand experience with Vermont as you do, having lived here only a few months. But facts are facts, and Vermont isn't as miserable a place as some people would have you believe. There aren't as many economic opportunities here as some other places, but in my case that doesn't matter much. Actions are being taken to improve the local economy, but that takes time. Who knows, this could become, for example, a tech center like Silicon Valley some day.
What I find a little ridiculous is doing nothing about perceived low wages. There's absolutely nothing wrong with moving. I've lived in some pretty crappy places, and now I can afford to live here. Similarly, you can do very well here if you have the appropriate education. One of my roommates in college, who died recently, was a Vermonter his whole life, other than college, and did quite well for himself: Francis E. Morrissey Jr. Obituary: View Francis Morrissey's Obituary by Rutland Herald. I never heard him complain about lousy jobs and low pay.
I don't think any vermonter is looking to get rich. Having lived in this state for a long time in both rural and suburban areas, most natives of the state just want a livable wage. I'm not picking on you Paul, but you are the type of person many natives have grown to resent over the years. You come from a wealthier area, purchase a nice home and want things to stay as they are. I know you mean no harm by moving here and wanting that, but it is a cycle that drives prices up on homes and leads to little or no development outside of the tourism industry. It's not fair to keep things as they are all the time. Laws are put in place to limit development which also then hurts job growth. People from out of state now outnumber natives in the state and I feel we shouldn't impose our beliefs on how the state should be (there can be balance between growth and people's preferences). Meaning we don't want our view ruined or we don't want a mill down the road from us. Vermonters don't necessarily want that either, but there can be a balance. In towns such as Stowe, Ludlow, Manchester, Arlington, etc the number of out of state owners is near 75%. The last numbers I saw for the entire state were at 15% hot of state ownership. It's fairly easy to see how out of state residents as well as people newly moving in can have an effect. Out of state residents don't have voting rights, but some move here typically at some point in their ownership. This type of reasoning is in the Vermont news all the time. People don't want a wind farm because it will ruin their view, or they don't want the farmer across the way to put in a manure pit because of the smell, or fighting an egg farm from being built because of the smell. This hurts construction jobs as well as long term jobs. In many cases these jobs are good paying jobs.
We all love Vermont for its beauty. There is no question about that, but for this state to prosper, we need to make sure we aren't selfish in putting our beliefs on how the state should be. We outnumber the natives of the state and they deserve better than what they are getting. Right now they are underpaid and outpriced in their own state. If this happened to any of us in our home states (and I'm sure it has), we would not have been happy.
Obviously I don't have as much first-hand experience with Vermont as you do, having lived here only a few months. But facts are facts, and Vermont isn't as miserable a place as some people would have you believe. There aren't as many economic opportunities here as some other places, but in my case that doesn't matter much. Actions are being taken to improve the local economy, but that takes time. Who knows, this could become, for example, a tech center like Silicon Valley some day.
What I find a little ridiculous is doing nothing about perceived low wages. There's absolutely nothing wrong with moving. I've lived in some pretty crappy places, and now I can afford to live here. Similarly, you can do very well here if you have the appropriate education. One of my roommates in college, who died recently, was a Vermonter his whole life, other than college, and did quite well for himself: Francis E. Morrissey Jr. Obituary: View Francis Morrissey's Obituary by Rutland Herald. I never heard him complain about lousy jobs and low pay.
Come visit me if you want to see where Vermont is going. I'll warn you, it ain't pretty and it won't be featured in the Globe or NYT magazine.
And as far as the next Silicon Valley goes, forget it.
FYI I have a PhD in engineering and run a high tech business. I too thought it was possible to improve the economy. I did the "welcome back Kotter" thing, thinking I could do help get things moving again. I put my money where my mouth was and was on the BOD of a business incubator project for several years. I've been around the world and back and I think I have a good idea of what is needed to get a high tech center going. Heaven knows I've lived in enough of them - three to be exact. I had the privelege of being an insider in a state which once had been poor, depending on dairy, tourism, and handouts from other states turn things around and become a high tech economic powerhouse. It took about 30 years and the state government embarked on a specific plan. You need an infrastructure of roads and communication and you need a world class research/ educational institution that produces science and engineering knowledge. You also need cooperation between educational / research institutions and industry.
It was after beating my head against a brick wall for about six years that I realized that what many of my friends and associates in NH (near Dartmouth) had been telling me was true. Vermont is driving business away because its citizens and government want it that way.
VT will never have a high tech center for the simple reason that there is no source of brains and knowledge. VT has UVM, not exactly a stellar institution of high education. MA has MIT, Harvard and a host of educational institutions (like Tufts) which, if they were in VT, would blow UVM out of the water. The SF Bay Area, where I spent 4-1/2 years, has Stanford and Berkeley, whose graduates founded companies like HP.
There are only so many institutions of higher education that a region can accomodate. Young geeks with real brains and $$ in New England go to MIT (or try to). If they have brains but no cash they go to WPI or RIT. My point is, if you want a high tech center, you need the new ideas that can be patented or can be turned into new products, and VT doesn't have it and is not about to. The state's priorities are such that they are delighted at having cornered the captive insurance market. There appears to be a fantasy about creating jobs related to green energy but in my not-so-humble opinion, Montpelier has no clue what is required or what is realistic.
VT is also not going to profit from the existence of Dartmouth because Dartmouth grads want no part of the VT tax structure. A few years ago I had a LONG talk with the guy who founded Hypertherm and who has gone on to bigger and better things about why the eastern part of VT looks like a war zone. The Hanover / Lebanon area is bustling, and I don't mean the cheezy box stores in West Leb. I mean the spin-offs from Dartmouth, which in turn churn the service industry. Drive up I-89 and you'll wonder who turned out the lights when you cross the river. Most people cite the sales tax as the reason for the dichotomy in economies between NH and VT because they think retail (selling crap from China) drives economies. What is really happening is that VT has an income tax (NH does not), VT has a pro-active, overeager regulatory culture (in NH a business has to actually do something objectionable to get on an agency's radar), and the southestern part of NH benefits economically from Rt 128 sprawl. Old-time NH residents may not like the MA transplants, but the high tech businesses they bring with them sure do good things for the tax base!
I suspect that many Vermonters DO want to move but cannot afford to. Right now I have a house on the market that I inherited. Taxes are well over $3000/year. Fortunately I am able to afford to pay taxes, utilities, heat etc on a house that I am not using. What about a Vermont family who lives in such a house? How are they supposed to just pick up and move as you suggest if they cannot sell their house? Or are they supposed to move and then pay to maintain an empty house?
I'm sorry to hear about your roommate, he was not very old when he died. My sincere condolences. Since he was 60 when he died, he was able to profit from the "good times" we used to have here. Oh I see the guys who made their money years ago who are in that age group. They'll be coming back in a few months, sporting their tans and FL license plates. However the Vermonters who are 10-20 years younger will not be so well-off. No Vermont is not a state where you can get rich, but it's not even a state where you can do reasonably well.
Last edited by FrugalYankee; 02-08-2012 at 08:59 AM..
Come visit me if you want to see where Vermont is going. I'll warn you, it ain't pretty and it won't be featured in the Globe or NYT magazine.
And as far as the next Silicon Valley goes, forget it.
FYI I have a PhD in engineering and run a high tech business. I too thought it was possible to improve the economy. I did the "welcome back Kotter" thing, thinking I could do help get things moving again. I put my money where my mouth was and was on the BOD of a business incubator project for several years. I've been around the world and back and I think I have a good idea of what is needed to get a high tech center going. Heaven knows I've lived in enough of them - three to be exact. I had the privelege of being an insider in a state which once had been poor, depending on dairy, tourism, and handouts from other states turn things around and become a high tech economic powerhouse. It took about 30 years and the state government embarked on a specific plan. You need an infrastructure of roads and communication and you need a world class research/ educational institution that produces science and engineering knowledge. You also need cooperation between educational / research institutions and industry.
It was after beating my head against a brick wall for about six years that I realized that what many of my friends and associates in NH (near Dartmouth) had been telling me was true. Vermont is driving business away because its citizens and government want it that way.
VT will never have a high tech center for the simple reason that there is no source of brains and knowledge. VT has UVM, not exactly a stellar institution of high education. MA has MIT, Harvard and a host of educational institutions (like Tufts) which, if they were in VT, would blow UVM out of the water. The SF Bay Area, where I spent 4-1/2 years, has Stanford and Berkeley, whose graduates founded companies like HP.
There are only so many institutions of higher education that a region can accomodate. Young geeks with real brains and $$ in New England go to MIT (or tries to). If they have brains but no cash they go to WPI or RIT. My point is, if you want a high tech center, you need the new ideas that can be patented or can be turned into new products, and VT doesn't have it and is not about to. The state's priorities are such that they are delighted at having cornered the captive insurance market. There appears to be a fantasy about creating jobs related to green energy but in my not-so-humble opinion, Montpelier has no clue what is required or what is realistic.
VT is also not going to profit from the existence of Dartmouth because Dartmouth grads want no part of the VT tax structure. A few years ago I had a LONG talk with the guy who founded Hypertherm and who has gone on to bigger and better things about why the eastern part of VT looks like a war zone. The Hanover / Lebanon area is bustling, and I don't mean the cheezy box stores in West Leb. I mean the spin-offs from Dartmouth, which in turn churn the service industry. Drive up I-89 and you'll wonder who turned out the lights when you cross the river. Most people cite the sales tax as the reason for the dichotomy in economies between NH and VT because they think retail (selling crap from China) drives economies. What is really happening is that VT has an income tax (NH does not), VT has a pro-active, overeager regulatory culture (in NH a business has to actually do something objectionable to get on an agency's radar), and the southestern part of NH benefits economically from Rt 128 sprawl. Old-time NH residents may not like the MA transplants, but the high tech businesses they bring with them sure do good things for the tax base!
I suspect that many Vermonters DO want to move but cannot afford to. Right now I have a house on the market that I inherited. Taxes are well over $3000/year. Fortunately I am able to afford to pay taxes, utilities, heat etc on a house that I am not using. What about a Vermont family who lives in such a house? How are they supposed to just pick up and move as you suggest if they cannot sell their house? Or are they supposed to move and then pay to maintain an empty house?
I'm sorry to hear about your roommate, he was not very old when he died. My sincere condolences. Since he was 60 when he died, he was able to profit from the "good times" we used to have here. Oh I see the guys who made their money years ago who are in that age group. They'll be coming back in a few months, sporting their tans and FL license plates. However the Vermonters who are 10-20 years younger will not be so well-off. No Vermont is not a state where you can get rich, but it's not even a state where you can do reasonably well.
Well, I was using high tech as a hypothetical. Although many of the elements necessary for the development of a high tech center are missing, that could change over time. Working from a remote location is becoming more standard. Also, some billionaires don't care about high taxes. Still, as you say, Vermont at this point is not as competitive as other states in attracting that kind of business.
As far a moving goes, that's a tradition that goes way back in Vermont. I used to live near Grand Detour, Illinois. In 1836, a blacksmith who couldn't make a living in Middlebury moved there. His name was John Deere.
I don't think any vermonter is looking to get rich. Having lived in this state for a long time in both rural and suburban areas, most natives of the state just want a livable wage. I'm not picking on you Paul, but you are the type of person many natives have grown to resent over the years. You come from a wealthier area, purchase a nice home and want things to stay as they are. I know you mean no harm by moving here and wanting that, but it is a cycle that drives prices up on homes and leads to little or no development outside of the tourism industry. It's not fair to keep things as they are all the time. Laws are put in place to limit development which also then hurts job growth. People from out of state now outnumber natives in the state and I feel we shouldn't impose our beliefs on how the state should be (there can be balance between growth and people's preferences). Meaning we don't want our view ruined or we don't want a mill down the road from us. Vermonters don't necessarily want that either, but there can be a balance. In towns such as Stowe, Ludlow, Manchester, Arlington, etc the number of out of state owners is near 75%. The last numbers I saw for the entire state were at 15% hot of state ownership. It's fairly easy to see how out of state residents as well as people newly moving in can have an effect. Out of state residents don't have voting rights, but some move here typically at some point in their ownership. This type of reasoning is in the Vermont news all the time. People don't want a wind farm because it will ruin their view, or they don't want the farmer across the way to put in a manure pit because of the smell, or fighting an egg farm from being built because of the smell. This hurts construction jobs as well as long term jobs. In many cases these jobs are good paying jobs.
We all love Vermont for its beauty. There is no question about that, but for this state to prosper, we need to make sure we aren't selfish in putting our beliefs on how the state should be. We outnumber the natives of the state and they deserve better than what they are getting. Right now they are underpaid and outpriced in their own state. If this happened to any of us in our home states (and I'm sure it has), we would not have been happy.
If it makes any difference, I don't intend to make any effort to impede economic growth here. I have no problem with manure smells and don't mind wind turbines either.
As far as the locals versus the outsiders issues go, I don't really believe Vermonters have special claims on the land just because they've lived here for a few years. If you follow that line of reasoning, shouldn't the Abenaki just kick out everyone else?
If it makes any difference, I don't intend to make any effort to impede economic growth here. I have no problem with manure smells and don't mind wind turbines either.
As far as the locals versus the outsiders issues go, I don't really believe Vermonters have special claims on the land just because they've lived here for a few years. If you follow that line of reasoning, shouldn't the Abenaki just kick out everyone else?
I did not intend my post to sound like an attack on you. The point I'm trying to make is Vermont's climate has changed. What I mean by that is politically, economically etc. This has not been recent, it has been slowly changing for several decades. Vermont has been a rural farming state. People fell in love with the natural beauty and the people here and started moving to the state. Not a bad thing, but what they bring with then is their view on how things should be and the state slowly turns into a something different. This I suppose is not the worst thing that can happen (things and places always evolve), but when people demand so much regulation for areas like development, that is wrong. It causes the problems we are facing now. High home prices and low incomes. I'm not saying Vermont home prices are worse than LA. My point is they are to expensive for the incomes generated in this state. I don't you, I or anyone would be happy if for some reason property taxes would increase to the point we could no longer afford to keep our homes. This is were most people, whether they are native or not are stuck. They can't afford a home where they were raised. Sadly the fabric on which Vermont was founded on "looking out for one another" is going out the window. Let's face it, if we continue down the path we are heading it will be more than lack of income or homeownership will will have to worry about.
I did not intend my post to sound like an attack on you. The point I'm trying to make is Vermont's climate has changed. What I mean by that is politically, economically etc. This has not been recent, it has been slowly changing for several decades. Vermont has been a rural farming state. People fell in love with the natural beauty and the people here and started moving to the state. Not a bad thing, but what they bring with then is their view on how things should be and the state slowly turns into a something different. This I suppose is not the worst thing that can happen (things and places always evolve), but when people demand so much regulation for areas like development, that is wrong. It causes the problems we are facing now. High home prices and low incomes. I'm not saying Vermont home prices are worse than LA. My point is they are to expensive for the incomes generated in this state. I don't you, I or anyone would be happy if for some reason property taxes would increase to the point we could no longer afford to keep our homes. This is were most people, whether they are native or not are stuck. They can't afford a home where they were raised. Sadly the fabric on which Vermont was founded on "looking out for one another" is going out the window. Let's face it, if we continue down the path we are heading it will be more than lack of income or homeownership will will have to worry about.
I'm sure local changes have had the effects you describe, but there's more going on than that. Globalization and growth in the emerging markets are gradually eroding the economic power of the U.S. The lifestyle that most Americans have grown accustomed to may not turn out to be a permanent option. If you think Burlington is bad, take a look at stats for Detroit.
I haven't been trying to pick fights here, but Vermont has a lot going for it and I thought someone should be defending it on this thread. I agree that you need to have a strong local economy for people to live in an area, but for a state like Vermont, there's a balancing act between natural beauty and overdevelopment. It's ironic that Walden has become a symbol of unspoiled nature, because nothing could be further from the truth: Walden Pond History. I'd hate to see Vermont follow that path.
Last edited by pauldorell; 02-08-2012 at 02:40 PM..
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There appears to be a fantasy about creating jobs related to green energy but in my not-so-humble opinion, Montpelier has no clue what is required or what is realistic.
