Legislative Changes that We Need to Survive

The Case for Local Wheat and Bread in Vermont by Erik Andrus (Good Companion Bakery) is extraordinarily well-written; nay, timeless. It shows what we need to do if we wish to continue to eat in Vermont, yet very little of it can happen within the current legislative and tax milieu. Secession or no secession.

Somalia have less energy than we do, in Vermont we'll have less energy soon and lots of walking too... are they better off? In Somalia, most of the land is owned by a few families that keep it out of production, preferring to skim the cream and speculate on the rest.

In Vermont we have an ass-backwards tax system that encourages speculation, by taxing us on capital improvements to the land; e.g. improving fertility through means natural or petrochemical, rather than taxing on the unimproved value, a value which is created by the community. That value is a common resource; our Commons.

Let me elaborate. Fertility added to the soil (maintained through constant renewal) is Capital. It is not the Land itself, which is part of Vermont's Commons. The Towns and the State Government currently act as a parasite on the labour of Vermonters and especially on the farmer, who, acting as capitalist, improves the land.

The Towns serve to represent absentee landowners, who manifestly pay little to no tax on the speculative value of their landholdings. This windfall makes the value go up, why would I sell it to you today for $100,000 if it may be worth $150,000 next year, and also pay no tax if I hold it out of use? The end result is development in sprawl --- and the destruction of good agricultural land. You see this landscape today, all over Vermont. Suburbia is made though the driver of land speculation, which should rightfully be discouraged through taxation, but is today not only encouraged but highly subsidised by our 'representatives'.

Homesteaders, on the other hand, are taxed highly. In the town where I live, residents have to pay a higher property tax rate than nonresidents... for no municipal services or amenities, not so much as a crosswalk, a bike rack, a park & ride, or a school zone. Homesteaders get one day of rant per year at Town Meeting, as a result of which nothing changes.

Among Vermont's absentee landowners are IBM, Middlebury College, Vermont Yankee, various logging concerns and springwater bottling companies... you get the picture. Here's how the game works: Draw off the natural resources, get rich and pay nothing (in fact Montpelier will give you incentives and subsidies). Try to make an honest living, pay high taxes --- and stay poor. Labour and Capital are in the same boat, and keep getting played off against each other by the Left. It is the tragic history of an ever-poor state, not dissimilar to Ireland in the 19th Century or Somalia today.

It is imperative that the Towns change the property tax structure to recapture the lost revenue of the Commons. The destruction of speculative land values is already being accomplished by the land bust of this past year. Then, the rest of what Mr. Andrus writes can easily fall into place. It's that or starvation and mass migrations.