Chicago is a financial disaster and it's dragging Illinois into the fire. The situation is worse than detriot before it's bankrupcy.
It's so bad that illinois is the only state in the union with a negative population growth. And, doubly, the only state to have that honor several years in a row.
The debt is unsustainable and they tax everything. Just a few years ago they started taxing soda cans, and hybrids since "they don't pay as much gas tax".
They may have successfully taxed streaming but it's just another example of how incredibly desperate they are.
Illinois is drowning under pension promises from their massively bloated government. Enough that every Illinois citizen owes something like $20,000 to the state pension systems. They're squeezing money from stones
> Chicago is a financial disaster and it's dragging Illinois into the fire.
Cook county (Chicago) and the 5 suburban counties contribute more revenue to the state coffers than the entire rest of the state combined. The rest of the state receives a higher share of that revenue than Chicago and its suburbs (ie - they get more than they put in). [1]
> The situation is worse than detriot before it's bankrupcy.
Highly subjective, but having personally lived in the Detroit area before its bankruptcy - and currently living in Chicago now - I disagree.
> It's so bad that illinois is the only state in the union with a negative population growth.
Not so. Multiple states have experienced negative population growth year over year; and multiple states had experienced it multiple years in a row. [2][3][4][5]
Your comment is demonstrably, factually incorrect. Please support your opinions with facts, or label them as your own opinions.
Your first source is quite flawed IMO. For one, they focus on the idea that the impetus behind the Tea Party movement was some kind of schizophrenic notion of citizens wanting both low taxes but also many high-quality public services. The Tea Party in the Boston harbor wasn't simply about taxation, it was about representation or lack there of. The modern Tea Party that sprang up under Obama was quite similar in that regard, i.e. voters felt they were being squeezed while their government provided them an inadequate voice in how they should be governed, and after the massive shift in state and local governments in 2010 after the ACA was passed, the Tea Party essentially sputtered out because the goal of representation had been achieved in a lot of cases.
Secondly, it lacks focus on cost efficiency or assessing cost effectiveness in how the tax payer's money is being spent. I don't know the situation in Chicago very well, but my inclination is to discount any source as irrelevant if it doesn't address how efficiently tax dollars get converted into desired services.
Finally it seems more concerned with diverting the reader's attention towards national politics, particularly Trump's election and why voters voted for him.
I’m inclined to agree that the source isn’t great, but it’s also the only one I’ve found that directly addresses the “Chicago is the root of our problems” mentality found in IL politics. Looking past the commentary of the paper, I think the data is sound.
Specifically it’s a response to the GP saying “Chicago is a financial disaster and it's dragging Illinois into the fire.” If that were the case, it stands to reason that the state would be spending all its money there - however, we don’t see that. Page 23, I think, illustrates it well.
> I don’t know the situation in Chicago very well
I doubt that most people on the thread do; or they would know this whole “Netflix” tax is actually old news. Chicago ruled that Netflix was subject to the tax back in 2015. ;)
Regarding discounting sources as irrelevant if they don’t address inefficiency - wouldn’t that rule out most sources that talk about ... well, practically anything political?
Your own references show that Illinois is the only state with negative population growth for the last 5 years straight. Illinois financial state is totally unprecedented, and you didn't even bother arguing my point that the debt is equivalent to 20k per citizen.
Before accusing me of being factually incorrect you should read your sources
It's so bad that illinois is the only state in the union with a negative population growth. And, doubly, the only state to have that honor several years in a row.
The debt is unsustainable and they tax everything. Just a few years ago they started taxing soda cans, and hybrids since "they don't pay as much gas tax".
They may have successfully taxed streaming but it's just another example of how incredibly desperate they are.
Illinois is drowning under pension promises from their massively bloated government. Enough that every Illinois citizen owes something like $20,000 to the state pension systems. They're squeezing money from stones