The New York Times has a great article on how Vermont is a beautiful place that people are fleeing.
Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.
While Vermont's population of young people shrinks, the number of older residents is multiplying because Vermont increasingly attracts retirees from other states. It is now the second-oldest state, behind Maine. Arthur Woolf, an economist at the University of Vermont, said that by 2030, there would be only two working-age Vermonters for every retiree.
Without more working people, Mr. Douglas said, "we won't have tax revenue for anything other than public education and Medicaid. There'll be no money for anything else."
This is an economics question. You get the behavior you subsidize. Vermont was once a conservative state, but the influx of outsiders over the last 30 years turned it into a bastion of socialism. So today their population is shifting toward those who most benefit from socialism, the elderly. Meanwhile, productive citizens and companies are moving to the places that they are valued.
Jennifer Black of Walden, Vt., now in Stoneham, Mass., said she contemplated returning, with two children for Vermont's schools. But jobs for her husband, a defense industry engineer, are "hard to come by" in Vermont, as are some conveniences.
"When I'm up there visiting, I think I would love to live up there," said Ms. Black, 36. "The air's so fresh." But, she added, "you have to drive half an hour to a grocery store. I can walk to a grocery store from here. There's a place where my kids can take swimming lessons readily available here."
Jennifer Black probably considers herself an environmentalist and she'd probably tell you that she hates the idea of drilling in ANWR, but when it comes to her own family, she wants a grocery stores and community pools. What she wants is urban sprawl just like everyone else.
And Daniel M. Fogel, the University of Vermont's president, says some have not grasped the seriousness of the problem. They believe a shrinking population will prevent overdevelopment, but these "antisprawl folks are the very people who tend to value very highly the environmental protections and the social programs, which the state is not going to be able to afford if the working population shrinks," Mr. Fogel said.
Here is Vermont's problem. When the biggest voice of reason in your state is a college president, you know you're living behind the iron curtain. "Hey listen to me. I want the people's paradise too, but we need nasty filthy littering human beings to foot the bill."
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