I still don’t know what you could sell your house for vs your tax bill. I know Michigan is ranked about 45th for education but is number 14 in terms of property tax. Our rural county in Ontario doesn’t seem to have good educational outcomes in general. When I look back 75-100 years courtesy of some books I have and we have a organization that celebrates past excellence we had really good outcomes with kids from rural farms going on to get advanced degrees etc. We also spent way less money. It is amazing what they did in those old one room schoolhouses.
Shared services that are supposed to keep costs down. We had that too and then the (at the time Conservative) gov’t amalgamated many of the small towns with the idea that costs would go down. They only went up. Things that people used to do for an honorarium all of a sudden they wanted to be well paid. The municipal workers all grouped up in unions and the cost went way up The most coveted job locally is to work for the municipality. We have people who are as dumb as posts making six figures .
It seems like a fairness issue when people in the latter years of life many having accumulated large amounts of wealth are not paying as much as young people trying to cope with for instance buying a first home. I am somewhat sympathetic with the idea of old people being able to stay in their homes until they die but I think there are other ways of doing that.
I agree that the sentiment seems to be when voting for somebody can you believe them. One would think that would be most operative in local gov’t in small places. I large places I don’t think one has much hope
A quick google search Vermont pays about 30000 USD per student averaged over K-12. Ontario, Canada pays about 11,000 USD per student. It seems like Vermonters are getting fleeced. You can send your kid to a decent private school in Ontario for about 11,000 USD.
Well our CA property taxes pretty much cover the old in their later years and the young first time buyers. Our 1% property tax is around as low as it gets here in the US, and that helps that first time buyer. And besides that, they can then plan on a stable tax bill each year, and not have to worry if their house goes bonkers in value, they then have to pay the taxes on the bonker value. Most other states do not have this dynamic, so a lot of folks have to move just because of taxes. Of course that means their values skyrocketed, but doesn’t do much when you also have to buy into that market..
We are definitely getting fleeced. If we tested in the top three, then I could get on board. But we are far from it. Mississippi kids test better than us. In fairness they have focused on education. Imagine Mississippi spending less and testing better than us. Makes my blood boil that we can’t figure it out here in VT.
I have been going and have had family living in Vermont for 20 years now. Just go to the local 7/11 or grocery store and you can see why you guys rank so low. I do think however you are right up there near #1 in overall drug use. And are there no dentists in Vermont?? (-;
Just wanted to show the total taxes because while those in CA may pay less in property taxes, the income and other taxes bring it back up to a highly taxed state.
Their’s no such thing as a free lunch; it’s a question of are we getting what we need and want on the plate, and how much actually stays on the plate between paying for it and getting served.
Getting rid of WFA (waste, fraud & abuse) isn’t as easy as starting it, unfortunately.
Right I get that and get frustrated when people say so and so has free universal heatlhcare. Well you pay higher taxes to have that in your country!
Vermont is a poor state. And we have a lot of waste. But I do believe the US as a whole is still a very wealthy country. Could we have universal healthcare if we didn’t divert so much money to ICE and “Dept of War”. If Billionaires and the filthy rich paid their fair share of taxes? I know it’s super complex. But I feel like on the state and fed level we are getting screwed with how much we dish out in taxes and what we are getting in return.
I was all in for an agency to look closely and audit federal waste and inefficiencies, but not the complete disaster and utter sh*tshow that was DOGE.
