The state needs more young people, more children, more families, more people who pay taxes, and more people who can and are willing to work. This is necessary in order to be able to afford the number of elderly, disabled, and low income people who require services, not to mention to be able to make our public education system more affordable again. I don't particularly care whether this is accomplished via proper population growth, attrition, or a combination thereof.

There's many obstacles to achieving better VT population demographics. These include such factors as:

• the lack of available housing across the state
• the lack of housing that people of reasonable means can afford
• the lack of childcare in general so that people can afford to work
• national & global market forces that drive costs of things like building materials, food, and fuel
• regulatory hurdles that VT imposes that make it cost prohibitive to do things like build housing and open a daycare center in this state

A lot of these are real chicken-and-egg issues that will take a huge amount of effort and money up front to address. I know, deep down, that dealing with these (and other) issues that are hurting Vermont and Vermonters will be beneficial in the long run. But, like most people, I don't know how happy or willing I am to pony up my tax dollars to pay for these solutions, especially if I am not going to be a direct beneficiary of the services themselves. Sucks, don't it?