By Michael Lucci
03/31/2014
A net of 1.25 million more people left Illinois than entered from 1985-2010, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service on the migration of Illinois taxpayers and their dependents. In every single recorded year, more people left Illinois than entered. Recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates, which go through 2012, show that the exodus has...
TAGS: outmigration
By Michael Lucci
03/26/2014
House Speaker Mike Madigan has proposed an extra tax on million-dollar incomes. His proposed legislation, HJRCA51, would amend the Illinois Constitution to impose an additional tax of 3 percent on income over $1 million. This tax won’t touch any millionaires who don’t want to pay it. They’ll simply leave, and they are well-equipped to do so. The middle...
TAGS: millionaire tax, progressive income tax
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...
By Michael Lucci
02/10/2014
The common refrain made against Texas by those who defend the status quo in Illinois is that the jobs being created in the Lone Star State are lower-paying and less-rewarding opportunities. But not anymore. Texas is now unquestionably besting Illinois in providing for the middle class. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2012 the inflation-adjusted...
By Michael Lucci
01/24/2014
The story of Illinois’ steady out-migration problem is well known, but just where are Illinoisans moving to? Is the outflow driven entirely by retirees and beach-goers moving to Florida? Not according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which just released its 2012 American Community Survey of state-to-state migration flow data. These data use census surveys to...
TAGS: population
By Naomi Lopez Bauman
01/21/2014
As few as 11 percent of those purchasing new health insurance policies and believed to be eligible for coverage in the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges were previously uninsured, according to a recent survey by McKinsey & Co. In other words, the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, which was supposed to reduce the uninsured by almost...
TAGS: ACA: Affordable Care Act, Medicaid
The U.S. Census Bureau announced that Illinois had the sixth-lowest population growth in the nation in 2013. The state’s population growth was just 0.11 percent, adding only 14,000 people to its population of nearly 13 million people. Other large states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Texas grew seven to 13 times faster than...
TAGS: population
By Benjamin VanMetre
10/05/2013
Progressive lawmakers in Illinois continually argue that the state has a revenue problem. They argue that, with a little more cash in the coffers, Illinois could solve its countless fiscal woes. This talking point is part of a larger sales pitch used to advocate for higher taxes in Illinois. But it’s not true. In fact,...
By Brian Costin
10/01/2013
This morning we began to notice that a number of Federal agencies have “shutdown” their websites. We put that shut down in quotes because the websites aren’t really shutdown. In reality, federal agencies have “shutdown” websites while keeping them online to say they are “shutdown”. For example, here’s the page you will see when you...
