The “Sweetened Beverage Tax” bill – proposed legislation before the Illinois Senate – would impose a tax of one cent per ounce on all “bottled sugar-sweetened beverages” – has already started to receive a lot of attention. According to the bill’s authors, the tax would result in “a 23.5 percent reduction in sugar-sweetened beverage consumption” and “a...

Until the mid-1900s, people from across the world stampeded into Illinois in search of opportunity. Workers from rural America came to build Pullman cars, erect skyscrapers and fill factories. Immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in search of economic freedom. And laborers left the agrarian South to participate in America’s industrialization. Illinois’ population doubled from 1900...