By: Mark Glennon*
Most everything in Illinois and Chicago government in recent years claims to deliver some form of “equity.” To our progressive establishment, that means more equality in actual outcomes for the poor and other disadvantaged groups, especially racial minorities. Equity has been central to government policy since at least 2019 when Gov. JB Pritzker became governor and Lori Lightfoot became mayor, and progressives held supermajorities in the General Assembly long before that.
What are the results, based only on progressives’ own goal of better actual outcomes?
Utter Failure. Equity, as delivered by our progressive leadership doesn’t mean what they say. The right definition should be “stuff that doesn’t work.”
Look at equity from whatever angle you want and study after study says progressive equity efforts in Illinois and Chicago have flopped miserably.
A report last year on racial employment data from the Economic Policy Institute showed the following:
- Illinois’ black unemployment rate was the nation’s 2nd-highest, at 10.5 percent, in Q1 2023.
- Illinois had the nation’s biggest gap between its black and white unemployment rates: 7.2 percentage points.
- The gap between Illinois’ black unemployment rate and the national average for blacks in 2022 was the worst in at least 20 years: a difference of 4.8 percentage points.
Perhaps the most interesting is a 2023 study of racial inequality that ranked Illinois dead last. It was based on an index comprised of differences between blacks and whites on eight basic measures of prosperity — poverty rate, homelessness rate, share of unsheltered homeless, labor-force participation rate, homeownership rate, share of executive positions, median annual household income and unemployment rate, and prepared by reputable authors for WalletHub.
Last month, the Archbridge Foundation published an index for each state of barriers to social mobility, which it described as “the opportunity to better oneself and those around them.” While it commonly refers to a person’s ability to climb the income ladder and out earn the previous generation, the foundation said, “social mobility is also concerned with “achievement, aspirations, purpose, and skills development.”
Illinois ranked tenth worst by that measure among the states.
Again from last month, SmartAsset looked simply at the size of the income gap between the top quartile of earners and the bottom. Chicago ranked tenth from worst among the 98 cities studied.
At Wirepoints, we’ve found similar results. Nearly a quarter (24.7 percent) of Illinois blacks live below the poverty line according to 2021 Census data. That’s compared to just a bit over 8 percent for white residents, the 6th-worse gap of any state in the nation. We also found that median black household incomes in Illinois are only 54 percent of white incomes – the 3rd-worst ratio in the nation behind only Louisiana (52 percent) and Wisconsin (50 percent).
A widely accepted rule of economics is that there’s a trade-off between equity and efficiency. Sacrificing some economic growth is accepted as the price of achieving more equity, as it should be.
Illinois has paid the price but shattered the rule. We’ve had no net employment growth in 20 years, our total tax burden is consistently ranked among the highest in the nation and our tax base is fleeing.
In other words, we have nothing in terms of equity for the price we paid.
Minorities and the poor who’ve supported the progressive equity agenda should say, “We’ve been had.” Progressives should say, “We’ve failed” and, most importantly, the rest of us should say “Enough of this.”
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
A prog believes that Okun is Bunkum!
Here’s what the progressive elites don’t get about the equity agenda.
It does not lift up the needy.
It impairs us all.
The first picture in this series usually has the tall guy on the left with all of the boxes and this is usually the last picture in the series. The problem with version of equity (or any version of equity) is that it requires the tall guy on the left to give the fruits of his labor – the three tires/boxes – to the guys on the right, for free, so they can all share in the same benefit. This goes against basic human nature and sense of fairness, as all communist regimes have discovered, and this outcome can only… Read more »
Here is the other picture in that series.
Debtor, didn’t Obama use this graphic in his example of how cradle – to – grave “government assistance” enabled a hypothetical black woman to “live well”… I forget the name of the hypothetical woman… it shows her from birth to death, everything in her life supplied by the public dole…
When the time comes to blow the same old tired ‘dog whistle’, Black voters will do what they have always done. IL Democrats know this.
Your image is wrong. This is a more realistic representation.
Yes, exactly. That’s the point of the article and what the studies say.
What’s this “widely accepted rule of economics … that there’s a trade-off between equity and efficiency?” Going to the link provided, the discussion slips from “equity” to “equality.”
I think most of the folks reading this site understand “equity” to mean that everybody gets an equal chance, That could mean equal quality of education, equal absence of pollution, an objective and fair process for choosing gov’t employees, etc. I assert that this usually is the most efficient way for an economy to operate.
Taxpayer, that rule of economics is known as Okun’s Law, and it is widely accepted on the left and the right It’s described here by Brookings https://www.brookings.edu/books/equality-and-efficiency-the-big-tradeoff/ and here is part of it by Okun https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/docs/OKUN_EQUALITY_AND_EFFICIENCY_(AS08).PDF. It applies on many issues. On tax rates, for example, to achieve full equity you’d have to tax the rich at rates in the upper 90%, but that would kill off any incentive to work, thereby hurting the economy and efficiency. Most of us understand that intuitively. I would hope everybody is willing to trade off some efficiency for more equity, but lines have… Read more »
Good points by taxpayer & Mark. But I think the big scam in Ill/Chi politics is that “New Machine”-CTU public sec progressives are in reality not progressives at all. I call them the “fake progressives”. Behind the scenes they’re not interested in Okun Law/ efficiency/ equity-equality. They’re simply the same greedy old school machine, guaranteed upper-income not to be diminished deals for me at the expense of thee, all cover over with a mountain of equity hustle social equity bs. And backed by decades of Madigan era legislative public sec union protections & guarantees. (New Machine = Old Machine +… Read more »
Equity is, at its core, a grift. There are many, many people that recognize this ( let’s call them the Sharptons) and will use every trick to squeeze every penny out of it enriching no one but themselves. BLM?
Equity is simply racism against white males. If Illinois doesn’t want white males, there are plenty of other states that will welcome what they have to offer. This isn’t a problem for the white males. It is, and will be, a problem for Illinois when it’s subpar workforce can’t compete with red states.
Equity is a vote buying grab. 31% of America are white males. 69% of America are victims of white males. Nationally, it’s all about winning political power and distributing tax dollars to your friends.
Great article and great data by Mark.