TH:
Last year, I said the nation’s most important referendum was the proposal to emasculate Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (I was delighted when voters said no to the pro-spending lobbies and preserved TABOR).
This year’s most important referendum is taking place in November in Illinois, where pro-spending lobbies are very anxious to repeal the state’s flat tax.
If they succeed, the steady flow of taxpayers out of Illinois will become a torrent.
That’s because the flat tax is the only semi-decent feature of the state’s fiscal policy. If it goes, there won’t be any hope.
My buddy from the Illinois Policy Institute, Orphe Divounguy, has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal about the dismal fiscal and economic outlook in the Land of Lincoln.
Long the economic hub of the Midwest, Illinois has lost more than 850,000 residents to other states during the past decade. The state has been shrinking for six consecutive years and suffered the largest raw population decline of any state in the 2010s. …Growing government debt and a crushing tax burden are depressing economic growth. State spending is up, but personal-income growth is lagging. Since 2000, Illinois’s per capita personal income growth has been 21% lower than the national average. …ratings firms are paying attention. Illinois’s credit rating is one notch above junk. …Illinois’s public pension payments already consume nearly a third of the state budget, yet the unfunded liability—which the state currently pegs at $137 billion, though others put the figure much higher—continues to rise. …Since 2000, Illinois has increased pension spending by more than 500%.
more here
In other news….Illinois shows how destructive electing corrupt politicians will lead to higher taxes, …. and yet they persist.
This is why it is imperative for the states to nationalize their debt.
Bad behavior and corruption are being amply rewarded – and will continue to be rewarded until “the people” have had enough. As long as social mobility is assured there’s a “relief valve” in operation – but when there’s no place to go the shit will hit the proverbial fan. America is the repository of the disaffected throughout the world (and has been since its discovery) but this is winding down and a national socialist movement (as BS is leading) which nationalizes all debt and imbecility will leaven the states in their capacities to avoid corruption and decay. Illinois, California, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan – wherever corruption is – will become the norm.
izlamo delenda est …
Democrats. Gotta love em.🖕
This should be a lesson of what happens when a population stupidly elects generations of criminals whose only consistent interest is in making a living for themselves and their families, engaging in graft, and accruing power, all at everybody else’s expense. The future could be damned: they wanted what they could steal NOW. And they got it. Because they could. Still can.
It should be a lesson. But it won’t be. Not enough people ever learn such hard lessons in time, so it’s left to catastrophe to instruct them. But the thieves will remain nameless and insulated from the collapse they caused. Human justice will never touch or even name them and they know it.
See why I long for the return of the righteously wrathful Lord, Who will recompense ALL according to their every secret work?
Fleeing a high tax State only happens when there is a lower tax to flee to.
As higher tax States raise taxes and cause an out flow of taxpayers the lower tax States can raise their taxes and still have them coming to them where they will cause higher State taxes but still pay less than the States they left. This crushes the lower income people in the receiving State since their wages seldom go up enough to to compensate, and when they do it is just enough to pay the higher tax rates and resulting price inflation at best so they never get to participate in the State’s new prosperity and usually fall behind.
Increasing the quality of life for one class while decreasing the quality of another class, not the formula for a stable society and one that eventually gets someone like Sanders (or even Biden) installed as head of the government.
Unintended or intended consequences on the part of our masters?
People in Illinois aspire to “Clout”, the appearance of power. In order to be a candidate for clout, you get favors, then do favors in return. Pretty soon everybody is doing/getting favors. Politicians broker the transactions and you get to feel important about having other people pay more in taxes
It isn’t the criminality of the politicians. It’s the stupidity of the voters. Good luck paying those taxes, idiots.
NYS is on the same path, over the TAX cliff. They have never learned.
Been in shithole shitinois for 47 shitty years. Trapped now by my wife who has been in this shithole for 21 years, previously in bigger shithole shitafornia, that won’t let anyone in our family move until the youngest graduates high school. She hasn’t figured out that by the time the kids are college age we will be stripped of any ability to send the kids to any college, not that I give a damn about that, but she is adamant on sending the kids. Our home value is currently negative 45% since 2000 while property taxes are up 36%. It’s like fighting the tide, good luck with that. Every state run thing we’re forced to pay costs MUCH more every goddamn year.
Believe it or not taxes aren’t the worst thing here. It’s the people. I can’t stress enough how much people suck around here. The most unfriendly godawful smug little bitches at every corner, they are unavoidable insufferable gigantic thundercunts at every level.
Illinois won’t be impeded by lowly voters.
If voting changed anything, we wouldn’t allow you to do it.
Sadly – due to forces beyond the control of the humans (voter fraud, for instance) – the humans are in the position where they can no longer restrain the thugs by the electoral process. Voting has become a joke. Those who pay no taxes vote to raise the taxes of others so that they can feed off of them. Typical parasitic activity – and perfectly reasonable – to the parasites. The hosts suck into the parasites’ and the parasites’ handlers’ lies because of gullibility and mal-education and when they awaken to their peril it’s too late.
izlamo delenda est …
ecp,
I’m from the far southern tip, across the river from Kentucky. You sound like you may be in Champaign-Urbana or Springfield?
The problem is the people fleeing are the ones that voted for this mess. They then start to ruin the state they flee to.
grool, stuck in Chicagoland area. I went to college at SIUC, it’s much nicer there. Since crook county wags the whole state around when anyone says Illinois sucks I know they are referring to crook county and the surrounding 4 or 6 counties. Springfield and Urbana are up there on the shitlist too, but crook county is the ultimate thorn.
About 10 years ago Illinois raised income taxes 50% (50%!!!), supposedly to pay down debt. After the five year tax hike expired, Illinois was in much much higher debt.
Later, the income tax hike was made permanent. But Illinois goes into more debt every year.
The number of teachers, home ec teachers, phys Ed teachers, kindergarten teachers, etc., receiving $100,000+ annual pensions, at home sitting on their asses, is well into the 100,000s – and pension income is untaxed in Illinois.
The politicians are buying votes with those fat, untaxed benefits. Not only the teacher’s vote but their husband’s, and their kid’s, and likely their parent’s, etc.
Conservatives to democrats: Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.
So sad. I have family scattered throughout rural Illinois. They are all at the mercy of the corrupt Democrat cesspool that is Chicago.
The huge population centers in liberal cities (welfare, immigrants, and a diminishing working middle class) have undue sway in too many states.
Will never forget flying into Chicago at night in the 90s. The streetlights eerily spanned into the horizon all round. It looked to me like a giant, all-encompassing spider web spread out below me.
However, never met a person from (or in) Chicago I did not like. But, the ones who moved FROM Chicago seemed much happier and relaxed. Don’t know how they voted after they moved, however.
the feds got Trump to sign a bill that included a new law to tax personnel property to help pay-off the public sector pensions, benefits, etc.