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The St. Peter’s Episcopal Church 2024 Capital Campaign Committee has set a goal of $350,000 to address three areas of concern.
BENNINGTON — State Rep. Jim Carroll reluctantly decided to speak out Tuesday about incidents…
Manchester’s own Lila Jones, 6, was the star of Make-A-Wish night at Centennial Field this w…
Arlington Memorial High School graduated 39 students in its centennial Commencement Ceremony…
BRATTLEBORO — World War II veteran George Stone Sr. recently celebrated his 100th birthday.
Latest News
POWNAL – The town has launched a community survey as part of a study of Pownal Center Villag…
Shaftsbury Board decides residents should petition to get Grandview sidewalk bond vote on the ballot
The Select Board has decided to defer to residents to petition for a bond vote to acquire ma…
A second teenager was arraigned Monday morning on two counts of sexual assault with no conse…
BENNINGTON – The Select Board raised no concerns during a public hearing on a proposed zonin…
Manchester’s own Lila Jones, 6, was the star of Make-A-Wish night at Centennial Field this w…
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Human remains found under a house in Old Bennington
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Police bust three more in connection to Twitchell Hill drug property in Shaftsbury.
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Reps. Carroll, Morrissey comment on water soaking incidents at Statehouse
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Arlington couple to purchase Shaftsbury Country Store
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Ex-LSU player Josh Maravich, son of Hall of Fame player Pete Maravich, dead at age 42
NORTH BENNINGTON - The 27th annual North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show (NBOSS) opening r…
A large trove of rare and out-of-print Saratoga history books goes on sale at Brookside Muse…
BENNINGTON — A long-running outdoor sculpture show opens with a party of art, hot dogs and PBR.
WEEK OF JUNE 8-16
BENNINGTON — On Saturday, June 1, 2024, 122 members of Bennington College’s Class of 2024 ga…
BENNINGTON — The winners of the Raggedy Writing Contest, a youth story contest, were selecte…
DORSET — Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning (GMALL) is excited to welcome Dr. Meg …
Our weekly roundup of school and municipal meetings
On Tuesday, May 21, SVSU and Southwest Tech partnered to host a hands-on event for local 5th graders to explore career and technical education (CTE).
WEEK OF MAY 27TH TO 30TH
Efforts at secrecy were successful, and Mike Taylor expressed complete surprise at being nam…
MANCHESTER – Candidate Chris Morrow, who has announced a run for the Windham-Windsor-Benning…
Town Administrator Paula Iken sees her new position as an opportunity to listen and learn and improve people's lives.
Bail hearing highlights struggles for convicted minorities, addiction, and rehabilitation in Vermont
A routine bail hearing in the criminal case of a Londonderry man accused of eluding Manchester police and violating conditions of release came to represent a minority mom’s struggles with an addicted son, her hopes for rehabilitation with the real possibility of a life lost behind bars, and what race means here in the Green Mountain State.
BENNINGTON — On Saturday, June 1, 2024, 122 members of Bennington College’s Class of 2024 ga…
DORSET — Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning (GMALL) is excited to welcome Dr. Meg …
Lawmakers and activists waiting Thursday afternoon to see if Gov. Phil Scott would sign a bill seeking education equity for immigrant students were not disappointed.
BENNINGTON – The scorecard for this area’s 2024 legislative races came into sharper focus on…
MOUNT ANTHONY HIGH SCHOOL — QUARTER 3 HONOR ROLL
The town of Bennington has installed a new street sign for the former Squaw Hill Road, which…
Landon Smith, a junior at Southwest Tech received this region's "Golden Wrench" award from the Vermont Automobile Enthusiasts club (VAE) on Wednesday.
Local Business News
Bill Deveneau is a man of humble perspective but yet understands the context of human behavi…
Being a counselor to children in crisis requires both a steady hand and a warm heart. For Be…
JACKSONVILLE — About a hundred paces past the entrance to the North River Bakery, where stat…
“How could you have fallen for that? My 12-year-old granddaughter would have seen this scam!…
BENNINGTON — The Better Bennington Corporation has been designated an Affiliate Main Street …
MONTPELIER — Pointing at several pieces of data, lawmakers applauded what they called the "s…
BENNINGTON — Approximately 200 people gathered at Little City Cider in Bennington on Saturda…
BENNINGTON — The Better Bennington Corporation held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for new busine…
BENNINGTON — The Better Bennington Corporation announced a ribbon-cutting ceremony for new b…
NORTH BENNINGTON — The Southwestern Vermont Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with Berks…
Mount Anthony softball punched its ticket back to the Division I state championship game on Tuesday, outlasting Essex in an 11-inning thriller…
Burr and Burton’s state championship hopes fell one game short, as Middlebury put an end to the Bulldogs’ season with its 15-7 victory in Tuesday’s Division I semifinal contest.
Mount Anthony softball’s senior leadership showed itself in the most pivotal moments of Tuesday’s Division I semifinal game against Essex.
The Bulldogs gave No. 1 South Burlington all it could handle during Monday’s Division I semifinal baseball game.
A trio of Blue Mountain pitchers almost combined to no-hit Arlington during Monday’s Division IV baseball semifinal contest.
Brady Mann enjoyed his most successful lacrosse season to date this past spring. He scored 87 goals and added 62 assists to go along with more than 100 ground balls.
Most impressive, however, was the fact that he was able to suit up at all.
A four-run third inning put No. 2 Mount Anthony baseball in a great position to grab a win Saturday, as the Patriots jumped out to a 5-1 lead over No. 7 Mount Mansfield.
No. 3 Burr and Burton boys lacrosse took care of No. 6 Rutland 14-4 during a Division I quarterfinal playoff game Saturday on Judy McCormick Taylor Field.
For the second consecutive year, Mount Mansfield ended Burr and Burton girls tennis’ playoff run.
BENNINGTON — The Mount Anthony softball team punched its ticket to the Division I semifinals Thursday afternoon with its 7-0 victory over rival Burr and Burton Bulldogs.
The annual summer week of the Cheshire Fair is one of my favorite childhood memories. The fa…
BRATTLEBORO — When Shelby Brimmer and her boyfriend, Paul Martocci, bought the old Hazel’s r…
Self-acceptance: something most of us strive to achieve at one point in our lives.
MANCHESTER — Sam’s Wood Fired Pizza Company is a carefree gathering spot. On a recent Thursd…
Mother’s Day: a day of brunches, flowers, cards, appreciation and, perhaps, expectations.
Houses. Cars. Jewelry. Vacations. Acquiring big-ticket items can be contagious, depending on…
Fresh off of a "spring break or bust" road trip to Mammoth Mountain in the eastern Sierras, …
Jane Davies, professional artist, leads a workshop, The Grammar Of Abstract Composition In A…
BENNINGTON — A long-running outdoor sculpture show opens with a party of art, hot dogs and PBR.
WESTON — Weston Theater's Young Company takes audiences young and old on a musical adventure…
BENNINGTON — The winners of the Raggedy Writing Contest, a youth story contest, were selecte…
MANCHESTER — Making art from the stump of a tree?
I began my health care profession as a physical therapist working i…
(Science Times) ; (Well)It may start as a twinge in your knee or hi…
So many things elicit childhood memories: colors, places, sounds an…
(Science Times)Around 1 in 5 adults between the ages of 40-79 is ta…
The term “eating disorder” conjures different images for different …
BENNINGTON — Talk to anyone working in the healthcare industry toda…
It seems like everyone’s doing it. Celebrities, famous doctors and …
The arid mountains outside of Beijing do not normally receive snow.
WASHINGTON — Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy was taken to a hospital Tue…
MONTPELIER — In February, Vermonters were enjoying a regular winter…
Many Massachusetts businesses will be limited to 25% capacity and h…
STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — The Berkshire economy absorbed another shock T…
STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — The Berkshire economy absorbed another shock T…
BOSTON — More than 74,000 University of Massachusetts students will…
LEICESTER — A Vermont State Police trooper is recovering after bein…
The U.S. Supreme Court seemed likely Tuesday to preserve a federal …
WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It marks a s…
The Liberation Pavilion, new permanent addition to the sprawling Na…
Ex-gang leader, Duane Keith 'Keffe D' Davis, pleads not guilty in 1996 Tupac Shakur killing in Vegas
A former Southern California street gang leader pleaded not guilty …
ALBANY, N.Y. — For two years, New York temporarily set aside its us…
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday expanded its effort…
WASHINGTON — The first flight evacuating Afghans who worked alongsi…
Opinion
The United States government is more than $34 trillion in debt. Did you know that our government owes $34 trillion? That's $34 trillion!
Whenever I write about economic policy, I get a lot of mail and a lot of comments basically asking why I'm not talking more about the national debt. So I thought it might be useful to talk about how I see the issue of public debt and why it doesn't loom larger in my concerns.
Specifically, let me make three points. First, while $34 trillion is a very large figure, it's a lot less scary than many imagine if you put it in historical and international context. Second, to the extent debt is a concern, making debt sustainable wouldn't be at all hard in terms of the straight economics; it's almost entirely a political problem. Finally, people who claim to be deeply concerned about debt are, all too often, hypocrites -- the level of their hypocrisy often reaches the surreal.
How scary is the debt? It's a big number, even if you exclude debt that is basically money that one arm of the government owes to another -- debt held by the public is still around $27 trillion. But our economy is huge, too. Today, debt as a percentage of gross domestic product isn't unprecedented, even in America: It's roughly the same as it was at the end of World War II. It's considerably lower than the corresponding number for Japan right now and far below Britain's debt ratio at the end of World War II. In none of these cases was there anything resembling a debt crisis.
But haven't there been many debt crises in history? What about Latin America in the 1980s, southern Europe in 2010-12 and others? Well, almost every debt crisis I've been able to find in the historical record involved a country that borrowed in someone else's currency, which left it vulnerable to a liquidity crunch when lenders for some reason ran for the exits and it couldn't print cash to pay them off until the panic subsided. In fact, the euro crisis rapidly faded away after Mario Draghi, then the president of the European Central Bank, said three words -- "whatever it takes" -- implying that the bank would provide cash to debtor nations under stress.
The only clear example I know of a national crisis brought on by high debt owed in the country's own currency is France in 1926, and that story is extremely complicated.
Still, even many of us who don't believe that the current level of debt will cause a financial and economic implosion can't help feeling a bit uneasy over projections that show debt as a percentage of GDP rising steadily over the next 30 years. So what would it take to assuage this unease?
Bear in mind that governments, unlike individuals, never have to pay off their debt. How did we pay off the debt from World War II? We didn't. Federal debt when John F. Kennedy took office was slightly higher than it had been in 1946. But debt as a percentage of GDP was way down, thanks to growth and inflation.
So what would it take to stabilize debt as a percentage of GDP for the next 30 years? Bobby Kogan and Jessica Vela of the Center for American Progress, working with Congressional Budget Office numbers, estimate that we would need to increase taxes or cut spending by 2.1% of GDP.
That isn't a big number! (Yes, the exact number could be either bigger or smaller, but in either case probably not by enough to change the basic point.) America collects a much smaller percentage of its GDP in taxes than most other rich countries; collecting an extra 2 percentage points would still leave us a low-tax nation and would be unlikely to hurt the economy. If stabilizing debt seems hard, that's only because given our deeply divided politics, even modest steps toward responsibility are extremely hard to take.
And by deeply divided politics I mostly mean Republicans, who declaim the evils of debt while pursuing policies that put long-run fiscal sustainability even farther out of reach. In a related analysis, Kogan and Vela estimate that permanently extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts -- many of which are scheduled to expire after 2025 -- would substantially worsen the fiscal outlook. Yet it's hard to find Republicans in Congress opposing such an extension.
Worse yet, House Republicans are pushing for drastic cuts in the IRS budget, depriving the agency of the resources it needs to crack down on wealthy tax cheats. That is, even as they yell about budget deficits, they're both seeking to cut taxes and trying to block efforts to collect the taxes high-income Americans owe under current law.
So politics -- specifically right-wing politics -- rather than the size of the debt is the problem.
Which explains why I don't talk more about the debt. The United States, with its huge economy and relatively low taxes, isn't facing a fundamental problem of fiscal sustainability. Given the political will, we could resolve debt concerns quite easily. To the extent that debt is a problem, that's a reflection of political dysfunction, mainly the radicalization of the Republican Party. That radicalization deeply worries me for several reasons, starting with the fate of democracy -- and federal debt is nowhere near the top of the list.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Vermont needs money to fix its failing infrastructure. It has topped-out in raising taxes and borrowing. Thus, S.259 was conceived: go after ‘big oil.’
Once, the United States held out the concept of freedom as a beacon to hold up to the rest of the world. It has now become the go-to word to excuse every assault that someone chooses to exact upon another person.