-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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It’s like having the best dairy cow giving the most and best milk taken to the butcher and then complaining that there is no milk. The voters in Chicago have to be the dumbest people on earth, oh wait, they’re mostly democrats.
There are two Chicagos. There are Chicago voters like you (and in the past, me) who have jobs, earn incomes, pay taxes, abide by the law. But we are the minority. The other Chicago is basically, for lack of a better term, the unwashed masses, with marginal employment, high crime, low incomes and cultures that don’t value education. You don’t go into their Chicago and they don’t usually go into yours. When was the last time you were in the Riverdale neighborhood in Chicago? A per capita income of $8,201. IL overall has a per capita income of $39,000.00. How… Read more »
“…… unwashed masses, with marginal employment, high crime, low incomes and cultures that don’t value education.”. Yet, you and numerous others here expect CPS teachers to overcome the truly negative influences you’ve cited and excite their students about such topics as the Pythagorean theorem, Ohm’s law, or even simpler levels of science, mathematics or even reading. It isn’t happening in the least for the majority of such students. We need to ditch the idea of compulsory traditional education with its wasteful expenditure for the value received or greatly alter what’s realistically attainable as outcomes for such “students”. At present we’re… Read more »
I agree with the idea that we need to reassess the programs. The teacher unions are the prime obstacle to that idea. They prefer to keep as many “students” as possible in the existing public school system. They vigorously oppose any proposal to change the way education is provided. Union uber alles.
Unions uber someofus but not all of us. We out number them.
The only question remaining for any Chicago business is:
Do you sell now for less than what you think your business is worth, or do you sell later for pennies on the dollar?
Capping it at 10 is an admission that abuse is anticipated. So promoters of this law are clearly aware and are simply saying that rapacious merchants can be squeezed. It’s like every protection racket devised by the Capones who govern!
This tripe just crossed my desk. Fortunately, my last Chicago client moved to Indiana to escape the insanity. The Illinois Communist Party (formerly the Illinois Democrat Party) seems to want the remaining businesses in Chicago to relocate elsewhere or simply close. Remember, this is the same bunch that just couldn’t find any expenses to cut when these businesses still paid their (street) taxes to the regime. Just you wait until Uncle Fed cuts them off from fleecing Federal Taxpayers. Add to this the bloodlust for businesses, with the resultant killings of the remaining Chicago businesses and you have a municipal… Read more »
Private-sector employers are compelled to provide public-sector taxpayer-subsidized benefits. Expect companies to seriously consider relocation, and small businesses struggling to comply to simply close-up shop, or go underground “cash-only” instead.
A large percentage of small businesses in ethnic and POC neighborhoods are already underground businesses. Labor laws don’t apply to the ‘unlicensed’ social club or the 800th taqueria off 26th St.
Notice how the media calls it a “pro-worker policy”. Call it what it is “pro-union policy”. This is just another policy push towards unionizing every job in the city. Sad how our media frames things, and our low IQ voters believe it all.
Can you run a for profit business and still call yourself a progressive? Or, are all so call progressive, pseudo-socialists, relegated to working in government, non-profits or universities only?
One would think, with all the crazy progress-ter-crate legislation, businesses would already be fleeing? I tried to Google city web site and see if # of business licenses is declining or growing over past couple of years. I couldn’t imagine # of licenses is going anywhere but down. Surprisingly impossible info to find? Unless anyone has any leads? or could make for a good WP piece.
Chicago is dead, period.