Write If You Find Work ... And Affordable Housing

Citing a "demographic crisis" characterized by Vermont's status as the second-oldest state in the country, [Douglas] said employers are having trouble finding qualified workers and that the state's economy is suffering as a result.
    Rutland Herald

    Art Woolf has been making the demographic case for a while now.  But, then, government (at every level) is always behind the curve and slow to pick up on the obvious. 
   

Confronted with the challenge of luring young people who have left, back to Vermont, the administration, of course, has a marketing plan that is certain to convince these self-exiled young people that chicken feathers, in reality, taste just like chicken salad. 

The state also will launch a Web site that will let prospective employees know about jobs, housing, recreational and social opportunities in Vermont. The plan also includes tapping into alumni of Vermont colleges, trying to bring those who moved out-of-state back to Vermont.

The Web connection will work this way, [Kevin] Dorn [secretary of the Agency of Commerce] said: "They'll be looking at their palm pilots and their PDAs on the subway in Boston and getting an e-mail from Vermont saying, 'If you're sitting in traffic or if you're on the subway in Boston, you could be in Vermont. You could be hiking or swimming this morning and going to work in an hour.'"

  Well, that certainly ought to fix the problem.  But on the off-chance this marketing campaign should fail, the governor wants, "to encourage the construction of more affordable housing in the state." 
    Splendid idea.  Art has been saying the same thing on this site, and in other venues, for a while now.  But the lack of "affordable" housing in Vermont is not due to global warming, invasive algae, bad karma, or forces entirely out of human control.  Government -- in the form of regulation and taxation -- made the mess. Unfortunately, it will have to clean it up.  But as long as "development" remains a sneer word in Vermont, the odds don't look too good. 
    One suspects those young people who left will stay gone.  They're plenty hip to internet come-ons.
                                                              

   

Comments

[Greg Decker]

There's a sizable constituent of young professionals who DID came back but now have a hard time justifying the decision. Speaking on behalf of myself and those I know well, we all understood sacrifices would be made but we weighed them against the nostalgic memories of rural Vermont childhoods. Ten years ago Vermont came up a winner using this equation. Today its not such a decisive result. However, its not just the 'numbers' tipping the scale. At least not for the people I know. Its the sense of impending doom. Every opportunity to fix one of the 'sacrifices' results in the idiots in Montpelier making things worse. At what point do you give up all hope for the state and leave (again).

Building a viable economy is a delicate task that requires, more than anything else, a stable regulatory environment. As Justice Brandies once declared “It's usually more important that a rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.” The folks making the rules here in Vermont are too preoccupied with social engineering projects to recognize this fundamental market requirement. As a result businesses are unable to affectively asses risks which tends to limit there investments in the state.

For the most part businesses can operate in any environment no matter how risky so long as they KNOW how risky it is so they can hedge against it. When you change the rules mid-game people loose money.