Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
The author only mentioned population and income taxes. He did not mention high taxes on property, high taxes on utilities and energy, high tuition, rising crime, soaring government debt, disappeared services. There are lots of bad things going on in IL besides the income tax. People want to change course, but politicians are turning the ship into the maelstrom.