Has Vermont Had It with Bernienomics?

The state’s voters love Bernie but not the results of his agenda.

By James Freeman of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Maybe Democrats should have looked at the results in Vermont when Bernie’s home state tried to set up single payer. A Democratic Governor abandoned the idea in 2014 once he was looking at an 11.5% payroll tax, plus a 9.5% income tax, and more increases to come. Progressives couldn’t even get single payer up and running for about 625,000 people in a state with a decent health profile."

"But at the state level Vermonters are considering more death tax cuts. Last month Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in his annual budget address:

Tax professionals consistently tell me that because we are so far out of line with other states, the estate tax is a factor in retirees leaving.

In 2016 while Mr. Sanders was off campaigning against financial success, Vermont’s state lawmakers were limiting the bite of the state’s punitive 16% death tax by exempting the first $2.75 million. Now Mr. Scott wants to move the exemption up to $5.75 million. He understands that people who have worked and saved all their lives are free to retire in any state they choose. “Vermonters impacted by this tax are well-advised from tax professionals, and they are highly mobile,” says Mr. Scott."

"This month Gov. Scott explained what he calls a demographic crisis:

...from April 2009 to the time I took office, we had, on average, six fewer workers in our workforce every single day... from the start of 1997 to the time I took office, we had, on average, three fewer students enrolled in our K-12 schools every single day.

In December, University of Vermont economist Art Woolf shared more cheery news in the Burlington Free Press:

The number of Vermont women in their prime childbearing years has been falling which means the number of births will continue to fall. Couple that with one of the nation’s lowest fertility rates and it is almost guaranteed that deaths will outnumber births every year for the foreseeable future... since 2010, 10,000 more people have left Vermont than have moved in from other states.

To sum up, enacting just a portion of the Sanders agenda has been a crushing failure for Vermont."