 Hello there, and thank you for tuning into town meeting TV. My name is Bobby Luciae Today we are talking about a report released by the public assets Institute in Vermont called the state of working Vermont Looking at some data from 2023 allowing us to understand how the workforce and the economy in Vermont is operating And to dig into that report. We are joined by Stephanie you who is the executive director of the public assets Institute Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Awesome. So Stephanie before we dig into this report, which I can tell was a ton of work and has a lot of data to unpack Can you tell us first just a little bit about public assets Institute and what you all do sure? So public assets Institute is a nonpartisan non-profit think tank We usually use that term in Montpelier And we do a lot with state state level policy particularly tax revenue economic policy at the state level We do have counterparts in a number of other states sort of just thinking about like I say state revenue and fiscal policy And really thinking about it from the perspective of how to make a state that works for everyone where everyone can thrive So that's sort of that the angle of public assets Institute and the work that we do and a lot of it is focused on What does life look like for most Vermonters not sort of what does the economy look like as like classically defined the economy? But what does it look like really for how are people experiencing it? What what's happening to them and that's part of why we put out this report every year That makes sense and how long has the Institute been around and doing this report? So we've been around almost well, I guess 21 years now I've been there for eight about eight and a half and so so quite a while and I honestly don't know the first year We've had a report as long as I've been here I think it's been at least ten to twelve years maybe but it's sort of morphed over the years I think you know thinking about the available availability of data thinking about data visualization Which has obviously gotten so much better in the last decade But also thinking about you know sort of what the purpose of the report is I think we're definitely living in a time where people are less inclined to read a 20 page report and more and more like the Visuals so that's sort of that that shifts. We've definitely seen but a lot of it is really like I say I think when you when you hear talk about the economy in the news or from policy makers They're really focused on sort of these big economic indicators and less so or their folk or they're focused on the perspective of business Right how our how our business is doing? What's the employment rate sort of all those pieces and we really want to look at it from the angle of? However mantra is experiencing it are people doing okay? What is the well-being of our monitors and so that's really the angle of this report right and how many folks? How big is this Institute the public assets? We're not very big So there's we're there's five of us there's five of us on staff, but then This report you know kind of is an all hands-on deck endeavor You know and and as I say we do have we do have good partners and national networks and part of this report usually comes out earlier And part of the reason that it's it was late this year was because we were waiting on some national data really talking about Who pays if there's a there's a who pays report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy And every few years they try to do this big report that really looks at the impact of state and local taxes on individuals in the state and so that that report came out in January and we really wanted to be able to kind of dig Into that analysis to understand because Vermont's made a lot of changes to the to the tax system over the last few years So we wanted to sort of look at how that was falling. So that was part of why it was late And the other piece of it is that there's just been such a roller coaster like post pandemic There were a couple of 2020 we didn't have great data And then the the last couple of years like 2021 and and a lot of a lot of these data are from the census for 2022 because they're sort of a lag when it comes out, but We were sort of waiting to see how much of this pandemic era stuff was really sort of a new normal Versus how much of it was kind of temp these temporary blips and what was going on I think we all sort of remember the just crazy roller coaster of 2020 and and how it showed up particularly in the workforce Particularly in people's pockets, you know And we and so this is really the first report where we feel like it's kind of a back-to-baseline report And we can really compare like are we back are there shifts that are long-term, you know And really kind of get a sense of what's been happening, right? And I think there's an interesting mix of some things that some trends that Jumped and then kind of stayed whereas other things jumped around and then kind of returned to baseline It's interesting to see which of those data points did what exactly as we Before we jump into the data so you mentioned the census you mentioned the who pays report What are some other you know, how does PAI think about? Gathering this data. Where else are you gathering data from are you collecting any of your own data or are there? Vermont partners that you're working with we often work with Vermont partners for the most part We're not collecting our own data. We have done Over the years we've done different reports where we have done more qualitative data interviewing Vermonters talking to more people We didn't do that that much in this in this report like I say because a lot of those big data sets were kind of back And we wanted to really dig into them But we do a lot of it is Department of Labor date Vermont Department of Labor data, you know Vermont Department of Taxes data sort of all the state level Data that are available and then you know again this the census is a big piece of it We also dig a lot into the not just sort of the big census data And you get sort of a lot of these big sets But we also dig into the micro data, which is a lot more detailed and sort of in-depth and you can really get kind of Each record and really have a sense of what's going on sort of household by household, right? Okay, so without further ado, maybe we jump in I'll I have a couple things that I'm excited to kind of dig into but maybe I'll start with just on your end What's something that and we have some slides here that we can kind of pull up some of the key? Graphs from the report, but what's something that really jumped out to you that you are Interested in kind of digging into a little further in this report So a couple of things so this is the first time we sort of we we organized the report a little differently this time around because we wanted to look at Again, it wasn't just sort of the roller coaster of the labor force that was or the you know The labor market that was happening during the pandemic, but we also had this sort of Big intervention by the federal government lots of federal aid coming into every state particularly, you know Vermont particularly Saw a lot of aid and I think you know there's the small state minimum was was a pretty good amount Which makes a big difference in Vermont, right? So also kind of wanted to see what happened with that federal aid and what you know What did it leave in its wake how much of it was permanent what was temporary and what did it do? And so it did give us a chance to really sort of measure that so we so we divided this report in a different way We kind of we always look at the labor market and they're just thinking about we're thinking about both paid and unpaid work But we're also sort of looking at who's employed where are the jobs, you know Sort of what did that? What does that look like wages all that stuff? But then we're all we divided it into what we saw as where we've made progress and where there are challenges And even in some of those areas where we can see real progress and real measure This is one of them and a lot of this is due to the federal aid in the sense that You know we had during during the pandemic we had this individual stimulus payments We had the increase in unemployment benefits We also had the big expanded child tax credit Which is probably the most responsible for the decrease in poverty that we saw in pretty much every state and across the country Almost poverty was halved, right? So a really big difference, but that was temporary so we were expecting it to bounce back up and part of the question is what is Vermont as a state going to do to kind of Measure this to kind of either keep the progress going or You know kind of go back to the baseline of of the you know a poverty rate more in the 10% zone So so that was a big part of of sort of what we were trying to do with this report And then we wanted to look at those challenges that really might have gotten worse during the pandemic or even the vet, you know Got worse over these last few years sort of regardless of the pandemic like climate change but Obviously, I think there's been a lot of attention paid to the housing shortage in Vermont and particularly, you know the fact that Vermont has one of the highest homeless rates per capita and Seeing that real big that big jump in that and recognizing that again We sort of made sure people had housing temporarily during the pandemic And then we sort of let some of that lapse and the question is now what what are we going to do about it? Going forward. Yeah that relationship. I think is interesting here about about The poverty rates seeming to go down in the past couple of years But then the number of folks that are living without a home in Vermont going up dramatically And I think there's one there might be I'm not sure if we have that one here, but it's yeah Here we go. So this is just such a dramatic shift in and So basically tripling More than tripling the amount of folks without a home in Vermont from 2019 to 2023 Can you talk a little bit more about this this trend and how you know, why are we seeing poverty going down? But then homelessness going up in Vermont. So definitely the cost of housing is increasing faster than wage growth or anything like that So that's certainly a factor, but I think there's a couple things happening You know, they're sort of confounding things happening with this one thing I do want to point out is that a lot of this a lot of the The housing aid ended in June a lot of people in June of 2023 So these numbers the last count was January of 2023 when we did the report the January 2024 count wasn't out yet But what so you do see the big growth, but you also see that they're all sheltered, right? That there was that more shelter was made available when you saw that growth and so part of the question is how much of that is is People identifying as homeless because there were Supports right so it may have been that those people had been doubled up for a while or just not looking for shelter And when that shelter became available then, you know, then you see people taking advantage of that increased shelter But I think that points to a real need right that those people needed that those people didn't have access to housing and needed that access to housing I think there's also ways in which again as the cost of housing housing has gone up in Vermont and as we have the housing shortage You know it has gotten tighter and tighter and we don't see we have seen some wage growth That's another piece that we we looked at in this report, which is that especially at the lower end We've seen wage growth even accounting for inflation, right? We've heard a lot of talk about how fast inflation has been growing But even once you adjust for inflation, there's been real wage growth at the bottom end. That's good news It's also coming on the heels of decades of wage stagnation. So it's still not enough growth, right? But it's it's at least the right direction But at the same time those housing costs are growing faster So so I think there's so I think there's a lot of of pieces happening here Obviously, it's a big topic in the legislature this year and and at the end of last year as well what to do about Well about making sure people have housing I'm curious with it's with this issue. It's it's very it can be challenging to gather data About folks that don't have a residential address What you know as as sort of the steward of a lot of this data for this report Is there any data that you like is there any like dream data that you don't have that you feel like would be really helpful To better understand how these trends are impacting people in Vermont. I there they're Big question. I mean there's there what there are a lot of data that we would really appreciate some of the immediate stuff That we've we've been looking for And on the housing front I think there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot of things that are happening and I think you know We've obviously looked at ways to address Affordable housing to keep housing affordable and I think part of the challenge with housing policy is that we do have There's just a there's a lot of moving parts, right? So so One one problem is that at the federal level there are certain benefits that are guaranteed, right? They're entitlements. So if you need food support if you qualify you get food support Housing is one of the ones where that's just not true at the federal level where it's a limited pool and You can wait years right to get a voucher to get you know to be able to be eligible for housing So then it sort of leaves states and local Local jurisdictions trying to figure out what to do with that and even if they're providing housing subsidies How do you make sure that that doesn't just drive up the cost of housing? I think there's also this problem of and whether it's particularly true in Vermont and you know It's particularly true in some places and and Vermont is one of them I think where you have a lot of demand for the housing in a rental market in a short-term rental market You know there we are a state that has a lot of tourism. We are a state that has a fair amount of second homes So you've got competition coming from places that maybe not every place has so I think that also makes a big difference but so I Think the state has done a decent job trying to get Get clear on what's going on with short-term rentals trying to figure out who who's who owns what's property and what what it's being used for Right and so I think there is some effort in that direction So I think that's that's a positive thing because we need to know a little bit more about that piece I think Setting aside the housing piece. I think there's also a lot of wage questions that we have right We one of the I don't know if I brought this chart But one of the pieces that we looked at is job openings relative to the people looking for jobs in the state and Vermont is Striking in that we have a lot more job openings than we have people looking for work And in in slow labor markets, that's the opposite is true, right? You might have three people for every job that's available and right now we have the opposite We have two, you know two jobs for every person that's available And so I think but part of what we don't know about those jobs And this is information that we would love to have and have been trying to to work with the Department of Labor to get for a long time is How much do those jobs pay? And what kind of jobs are they right? Like why are they hard to fill because they're Whatever reason they're low paid or their schedules are complicated or they just can't work for most people or Is it really a sort of a worker shortage problem? So that's one question one thing that we we usually put in the report and we didn't this year is We really look at kind of Vermont's average wage relative to the US average wage and What we've been looking at is for decades We've really been between about 80 and 85 percent of the US average wage on the flip side our costs Except for except for housing rental costs in particularly in Shendon County. Our costs are pretty average They're pretty close to the US average. So when there's so the gap is a wage problem more than it's a cost problem again housing in Shendon County is a slightly different animal, but But that wage piece really so there's a there's there's a lot of questions of why that would be true And why why not only is that true, but why is it so? Persistent why has it been true for so long and what do we do about it? We have pretty good minimum wage policy especially relative to the federal minimum wage or a lot of other states You know, not only do we have a decent minimum wage still still below a livable wage But we're one of the few states where it sort of automatically increases with inflation. So that's you know, which again is a good policy, but Our wages are still sort of stuck well below that US average wage So I think it's a good question what's going on there and we need more information. That's a super interesting dynamic there that the yeah wages are lagging behind the National average but expenses in general right around there. I think probably most Vermonters would say yeah, that sounds about right Yeah, right. So is it a wage problem or is it a you know a cost problem? Yeah, there's something we can do about both But right and as we talk a little bit about workforce. I know there's a lot of conversation in the state about the aging workforce And how we can meet the you know the labor needs of the state I know you had a couple of Sort of figures in here, but what does this report have to say about? the workforce and and how the demographics might be Changing or how yeah, how our workforce is is looking right now. Yeah, so a couple of things with that First we just so we also publish a monthly jobs report Which we just published yesterday and what we showed with that report is that both jobs and employment are pretty much back to the pandemic Pre-pandemic levels, right? So when we publish this report, we were just slightly below In terms of labor force. So that's a number of people working employed number of people working and then the sort of payroll jobs You know as another number that we look at and so both of those are pretty much back And you really did see you saw this huge sudden drop during the pandemic right March April 2020 huge drop And then we've pretty much had kind of growth since then and really kind of gotten back to where we want to be Which of where we were before so The labor force and jobs are mostly back. So I think that's you know, so let's start with that But what we're also seeing and what we've been looking at quite a bit lately is The share of the labor force that's over 65 is increasing the share of the population Obviously, that's over 65 is increasing. So the share of the you know somewhere in the neighborhood of it It's you know, it used to be you know, 20 years ago is probably 3% of the labor force now we're talking about 10% of the labor force That's over 65 part of that is because people are working longer because Whether you know probably a combination of necessity and desire, you know, obviously people are living longer So, you know, they're gonna work later So I think there's a lot happening there and then the you know again We're sort of the leading edge of the aging demographics. This isn't a unique thing. It's just that we're sort of first and kind of You know one of the sort of more pronounced states where that where we do have this bigger boomer population So but I don't but I don't necessarily think that those are sort of unchangeable, right? Though like that demographic. Yes. Yes, we've been aging. Yes, we have a large boomer population That doesn't mean it has to stay that way But for now what's been happening is that for the last, I don't know five or ten years I would say the Like the the fact that there are a greater share of people over 65 working has been offsetting sort of a decline in Well, there's two things so there's a shrinking So there's a growing older population which means sort of the the prime age what people call prime age workers Which you know 25 to 64 give or take when you expect most people to be working, right? That group is both the the size of the population is shrinking But what's interesting is it's not just the size of the population that's shrinking their participation rate is going down So there's two things driving the fact that there are a smaller share of the labor force, right? It's both that fewer of them Smaller share working and there are fewer of them, right? So so a lot of things are happening here So so one question is what's driving that what's driving the lower participation rates some of it was some of it pandemic related Maybe and yet are they coming back? It doesn't necessarily seem like they're coming back. So Is it a wage problem? Is it, you know, what is what is the problem that's going on there? And it seemed like in the report that and maybe I'm misremembering but this this was was this the statistic that had the participation in the labor force was for men in Ranking all the states The participation of men in the workforce was in the top half of US states before the pandemic and now After the pandemic is in the bottom quarter Which is a pretty big drop but then for women in Vermont's workforce their participation from before to after the pandemic is actually Just not necessarily overall but compared to other states has increased from 11th to 7th So we have comparatively for women a much higher participation rate than then across the country But for men it's actually much lower Right. So so a couple things are happening there I think so so first I think if if you remember a post great recession a lot of the impact of the on the labor force was Focused on men like a lot of the jobs that were lost post great or during and after the Great Recession were male-dominated fit fields construction Manufacturing that kind of thing. So you saw much higher unemployment rates for men after the Great Recession In but during the pandemic there was a lot of speculation especially early on that because a lot of it was going to be a caregiving Challenge that you there was a lot of this she's session, right, which is a hard word to say Problem where you were you were thinking that you were going to see a lot more women opting out of the workforce, right? Or not even opting out maybe sort of being compelled out because of the sort of the situation kids home and other caregiving needs Combined with the fact that there's already sort of you know, what you're seeing is this sandwich generation You know who who are both doing caregiving for older boomer parents and still raising kids, right? So there you have that challenge too, but all that to say What we didn't see is a particular dip in women leaving the labor force during the pandemic and staying out, right? They're both they're basically back Whereas men aren't quite back and I do want to say like some of those rankings We want to put the rankings in for context and that's something we did this year just to kind of give people a sense of what it means like where Vermont is but There's not a huge difference between the top and the bottom right so a couple percentage points of a participation rate could really change Your ranking quite a lot that said there is a real effect that men are not back There's also both an age swath and and a sex swath right like in the sense that younger people's participation rate has dropped so 55 and up greater participation in labor force 54 and the 16th of 54 across the board. We're seeing declines It's not huge again a couple points here and there but particularly in the 16th to 24 range You're seeing a pretty bit and whether again whether that's because you know people How much of that is necessity versus how much of that is like people who had part-time jobs Opted out of them during the pandemic what you know It's hard to say and I know for a lot of people, you know, if you were in college Maybe you took time off, you know, there were a lot of a sort of different choices being made in that age group I think during the recession and maybe they had some different options, but You're definitely seeing a pretty big dip there. So yeah, so you see these sort of different trends when you kind of slice it different ways and I think that the the sort of I Think the big questions that we should be asking ourselves as a state is like What's what's what's keeping people from re-entering the workforce if there is something? What are the barriers? Is it caregiving? Is it something else? Is it wage? You know, what are what are the issues and that's sort of what we should be Looking at I also think again those aging demographics are not Unchangeable right I mean part of what we saw it and and it may have been a blip I think that's what we're trying to to determine is we saw a lot of migration to Vermont during the pandemic That might have been a one or two-year blip. It may be something that can shift. I do think you know Climate change is driving moves to some extent, you know Vermont may be an attractive place for a lot of reasons and So I think so I think there's sort of like a lot of moving parts here and it's not that these demographics are sort of inescapable and and Necessarily negative right. I know I There's a lot of challenges to unpack in this report and I want to highlight I know there was at least one thing in there in the report as I was reading that I saw Vermont was first in the nation on But I'm forgetting what it was Yeah, but that was interesting too because the wage gap actually increased a little bit We're still first in the nation in terms of how much women make Compared to men in terms of the median it's the median wage or me is how is that measured? I think it was average wage Okay, it may have been median, okay But but right so so we've always had the we've we've had the smallest wage gap for a long time It grew a little bit, but we're still first which you know may say something But I think it's worth noting a couple things about our labor force one Our labor forces has more education than the than the US is on average, right? And we have more women working than more women participating in labor force than a lot of states, right? So we've had a pretty 50-50 labor force in terms of that split and the participation rates as you point out like a Patient rates have actually been a little stronger for women So so I think there's so I think there's a couple things happening there right like in the in the sense that The higher education depending on the profession. There's there's the various wage gaps, right in some cases there We've seen cases where the wage gap actually gets bigger sort of the more education there can be bigger gaps It also depends on sort of the dominate, you know, that is the field male dominated or female dominated sort of what's happening there So I think there's a lot of things driving that but I think generally speaking we've had You know women have done pretty well in the labor force in Vermont again We also look at you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the change the story reports Which have done a great job really sort of showcasing what's going on with women in the workforce And really and calling attention to the fact that you know, hey, we've got a Female speaker the house, right? We've got our first female congressperson. We've got you know We've got a lot of women in leadership. We've got a lot of women in the legislature So there are ways in which you know clearly Women are participating fully in Vermont and we still see some differences. All right, we still see a wage gap We still see some differences. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting With the last few minutes here. I want to turn over to taxes And this report does talk a little bit about the tax picture in Vermont And I know that that's something that has been in Sort of the media a lot recently. How are how are Vermonters thinking about taxes this past town meeting day? I think a third of school budgets and related property taxes were Not approved at the at the ballot and so this report is talking a little bit about About ways to raise revenue and what that might look like. Can you talk a little bit about what what's in this report about taxes? Yeah So I want to call attention to a couple of things the first is that you know, I think we've been talking about Income inequality for a long time So we so we have this chart that sort of shows the way that income inequality has begun increasing again And not even begun like the last 40 40 years or so really since sort of the Reagan era We've seen this increase in income inequality happening. So we know that there's increasing concentration of income at the top The other piece that we wanted to look at was we wanted to put this in a little bit of Context and now I'm losing that sorry the slides are all jumbled. They might be out of order Oh, there we go, but I just want to be able to put this in some context and this is not a Punish the rich call right like this is like like let's talk about where the money is and where it's been going So just to kind of put this in context because I think when we start talking about these big numbers It's really easy to just kind of lose sight of what's happening. So top 1% this is taxpayers, right? So tax filers top 1% so we're talking about 3,000 households give or take right because when you look at filers, you know You're in the 300,000 range So 4.6 billion now again There's a huge range across that the incomes kick in at about six five hundred and fifty six hundred thousand But the average income of that group is in the one point one million dollar range Right compared to an average income in the more like the sixty thousand dollar range for the bottom 99% Right. So again, I think we're and and then this who pays report the other piece Which I think might also be in here the who pays report kind of gets to this problem Which Vermont is one of the few states whose tax systems does not exacerbate income inequality But we're still regressive at the top, right? So once you hit that 250,000 roughly and household income you're paying less than the middle class as a share of your income Well, it's a good question. So this is a combination of all state and local taxes, right? So if you look at the income tax, you know, we have progressive income tax. So that piece is progressive Sales tax is regressive by contrast, right? Because everybody has to buy a certain amount But how much of a bite that takes out of your income depends on your income, right? So so even though we do we do have some sort of progressive features of our sales tax in the sense that You know, we exclude food and clothing and that kind of thing You still have to consume a certain amount, but that shows up But that looks like a very regressive tax our property tax or our school tax talking about town meeting day It's sort of an interesting one because in most states the property tax is really regressive ours because we have income sensitivity and because for a lot of people they pay their school taxes based on income It's pretty progressive up until about the middle class and then again, it looks like this It's regressive at the top Because those people are paying based on their property value and not on their income and you tend not like The value of your property doesn't tend to keep going up with your income at a certain point You have the amount of property you need and it doesn't keep going up, right? So that's why it ends up being regressive on that top end. So we've talked about moving to income-based school taxes for everyone But I think the point is that what we want is a truly progressive system So it's not this is not a sort of like punitive thing But it's more like we want to see that be an entirely progressive line And in order to do that it makes sense to sort of pick up taxes at the top end Again and acknowledging the fact that increasing income inequality means that's where more of the money is Yeah, I mean it's interesting to say I mean we mentioned that this Vermont's tax system is aggressive at the top and still one of the most progressive Maybe the most progressive in the country in a third. Okay behind DC in Minnesota, right? So and then but then you look at the challenges and it's you know We have one of the highest houselessness rates per capita in the state. We have you know education issues with making sure that schools have the you know, the Facilities resources that they need to educate students And so it is an interest, you know, it's there's Vermont is able to you know, it is able to collect I mean able to collect Taxes Adam in a more progressive way than many other states and it's still facing a lot of challenges Obviously, obviously every state has its own particular set of challenges related to its circumstances, but That in Vermont, there still are a lot of challenges and there still is room for our tax system to become more Progressive. Yeah, I want to make a distinction between So you can have a progressive line and progressive tax system all the way through and sort of have it go up like this, right? But where that line is matters, too Is the line an adequate amount or is it not an adequate amount? So it's about it's about both how we collect and how much we collect, right? So I do think that there's I think it's clear that when you're starting from a place of an inadequate investment and underfunding a whole bunch of things Making it more progressive helps and it makes it a fairer system But unless you're picking up more resources, it doesn't solve it doesn't help you solve the problems Part of what we talked a lot about in this report is the fact that we are facing challenges that we haven't faced before I mean the pandemic was obviously a big one, which we did get a lot of federal support, but You know, we lost our offices in July in Montpelier. They got flooded, right? And we got since we did we did and and clearly we weren't the only ones We're we're dealing with huge consequences of climate change that are going to be expensive part of the I think part of what happened with the school budgets, too is Is they're still dealing with the effects of the pandemic They're also dealing with years of underfunding on infrastructure costs and that kind of thing So there's so there's a lot of problems that are sort of catching up to us or getting worse because of neglect That we need to address and so I think you know again it's sort of we can make the system more progressive and We need to increase investment. Yeah, something that some folks will say when you bring up a Tax structure that really focuses on the most wealthy folks is that like well those families have the Capability to just move to New Hampshire if the if attacks like this were put in place What how do you respond to those folks? They're our response is that the evidence all shows that that's just not a problem, right? You might have the occasional person move here and there But on the whole when you increase taxes you get more tax revenue, right? Like it's pretty straightforward like even if you have a couple of people who tend to be the loudest and who tend to get a lot of attention Leaving it's really not an overall problem for the system and again, I think we also have to keep in mind I think it's worth putting in in perspective What state taxes are relative to federal taxes, right? Your state taxes for for a wealthy person for anybody your state taxes of your small share compared to what your federal taxes are Also again Regan Bush Trump all those tax cuts really Disproportionately benefited the wealthy, right? So we're also talking about a group of taxpayers who have had a lot of breaks at the federal level And we're not you know and we're talking about sort of recouping a small fraction of that at the state level This legislative session are you in the state house like I'm you know How often are you chatting with legislators about this report right now? So the public assets as a group is in there. We've got a couple of Great people on our team that are in there most days really working on some of this stuff We're part of the fund Vermont's future coalition, which is working on fair share Vermont, which is in an increase in income taxes on the Top one to two percent of Vermonters There's also been a lot of discussion I don't know if people have been following this but the idea of a state wealth tax Which you know separating out the idea between income and wealth recognizing that a lot of wealth sort of goes untaxed for a long time It's a little harder to do at the state level So I think it's more of sort of the beginning of a conversation rather than sort of a ready-to-go policy But but we're working on those pieces We're also thinking about the bottom end of this chart to one thing that's interesting about that who pays Chart is that bottom end has come down that six point three and that's partly because of the new child tax credit It's also because we've increased the EITC and I think it's really important to say that we need to do both right like we need to Lift to make it more progressive We need to lift up the the taxes on the higher end But we also need to decrease on the lower end because there's a whole bunch of people on the lower end that are struggling to meet Their basic needs another piece that we found in this report I think that I know we've we've running out of time here is that when you but when you look at family incomes A whole lot of people are struggling to meet their basic needs single people no dependents Really really challenged to like half are not able to meet their basic needs and then certainly single parents are really struggling But I think it's also worth noting that even with two adults and two earners There's a fair share that aren't meeting their basic needs So again just acknowledging that you know that we need to do more and we can do more on that bottom end by Making it more progressive. So we've made some good taking some good steps in that direction But I think there's plenty more to do. Yeah, and those are huge proportions of the population that are not able to meet basic needs That's concerning Well Stephanie you thank you so much for joining us Anything any last things that you didn't mention that you want to make sure you get to or did we did we cover as much as we No, thanks for having me. Okay, great Thank you so much and thank you for tuning into town meeting TV You can find this in many other programs about your community and the decision makers Representing you in your local government on cctv.org. Thanks so much