Challenges for Change (Vermont)

Since we're using management-speak: This all still sounds a lot more like "externalized cost"; it may lower *direct* taxes (for awhile) however the *actual* overall cost to citizens *increases*, by all the "little" things we end up paying for anyway, just not directly to the State. We know better than this. We can see that all the hotshot management gurus are so busy minimizing expenses (maximizing profit) that they're creating "too big to fail" and other such monstrosities. Monstrosities that not only cost us money, even worse, they dehumanize us. Anyone who has ever had to take time off work, and struggle to maintain some semblance of dignity and even sanity, while working through some whiz-bang "automated system" - only to find that they are a "special case" not addressed by that system and now need to spend hours on hold, being transferred from CSR (Customer Service Representative) to CSR, none of whom knows what we're talking about, few of whom care (after all, they may be from another state or even country), and still fewer (sometimes none) of whom actually have the power to help us... Anyone can attest to the horrible, painful failures down this road. Unless of course you're one of the execs taking home the big bonuses these monstrosities squeeze out of the rest of us poor fools at the bottom of this pyramid scheme; then you've got people to do this for you. In Vermont at least, we have not - I hope - been as blinded by dollars as some others.