Bad tax policy causes population decline. Don’t believe it look no further than Vermont. Vermont continued to lose population in 2019 which is not surprising. This population information comes from the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates of each state’s population. On July 1, Vermont had 623,989 residents, 400 fewer than a year earlier and 1,800 fewer than in 2010.
Slow and declining growth
On a percentage basis, Vermont’s 0.06% decline from 2018 to 2019 ranked it 42nd in the nation. This means only eight states grew more slowly than Vermont. The U.S. population increased by 0.5%, the smallest increase since 1918. Carrying this a step further comparatively, between the 2010 census and 2019, Vermont’s population dropped by 0.3%. Only two states, Illinois and West Virginia, grew more slowly. The U.S. has added 6.1% to its 2010 population, about 20 million people in the same period.
This trend is neither unexpected nor new. There is something very wrong in Vermont. New Hampshire is in danger of infection with the contagion. Here are some other nuggets from the Census Bureau’s report:
- In each year since 2016, Vermont has experienced more deaths than births.
- Vermont has a negative rate of what demographers call the “natural rate of increase.”
- That could be the first time this has happened in Vermont’s history.
- Given the aging of the baby boom generation and the falling number of women in their prime child-bearing years, the trend will continue for the foreseeable future.
- In the last two years, fewer than 500 immigrants have settled in Vermont annually.
- The Census Bureau dramatically revised downward its estimate of immigration into Vermont in 2018.
- Immigration into Vermont is now where it was earlier in the decade, at a very low level.
- Not only are more people dying than being born but no one wants to move there. There is a reason for that.
- For the 10th consecutive year, more people have moved out of Vermont than moved in.
- Last year, about 700 more people left the state than arrived.
- That isn’t as bad as it was in mid-decade.
- Then the net out-migration sometimes exceeded 2,000 each year.
The future
If current trends continue when the 2020 census count numbers are released Vermont’s population will be less than it was in 2010. The last time Vermont’s population dropped between two censuses was in 1940, when Vermont had 400 fewer residents than in 1930. That was in the Great Depression which caused economic dislocation across the country. Vermont was not immune from its effects as many Vermonters left trying to find work elsewhere. Today’s situation is self inflicted, not the result of national economic collapse.
In Vermont’s 230-year history, the only other population decline was in the 1910’s. That decline, exactly one century ago, was when the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 ravaged the world. Fifty to one hundred million people worldwide died. More than one-half million in the U.S., and about 2,000 Vermonters, contributing to the state’s population decline. Additionally, many rural Vermonters left the grinding poverty of hill farms, moving to urban areas to work in war production factories.
The current decade-long population decline is different. It is occurring when the economy is healthy and nothing remotely resembling the Spanish flu plagues the world. Some projections call for a continued population decline through the 2020s. If that does occur, it will be the first 20-year period of population decline in the state’s history.
Conclusion
It is very difficult to earning a living when all of the money is taken by the state in taxes. Companies who cannot make money cannot pay wages let alone raise them. Progressive bastion Vermont is a bell weather state for the effects of socialism on a state’s economy. No government can give everything, to everyone, for free, all the time. The money has to come from somewhere. Bad tax policy causes population decline.
