Despite Gov. J.B. Pritzker touting growth in “every major region,” Illinois shed jobs in three metropolitan areas and lagged the national average in seven more.
Only Mississippi has fared worse than Illinois in personal income growth since the Great Recession hit at the end of 2007. Analysis shows state income taxes matter.
Springfield lawmakers have yet to learn the lesson that money walks. And it’s not just to other states. Sometimes, it walks past the legal dispensary with a 40% tax rate and into a dealer’s house.
Illinois could give every undergraduate in public college nearly $70k a year if it spent the same 4% of its budget on pensions as it did throughout the 90s, rather than the 25% it spends today.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.