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.
Economic incentives are ‘unaffordable’, but lavish handouts to public unions have no limit. This is what happens when you think $$$ comes out of thin air. Spending in Illinois is out of control, but neither Pritzker or the Leftist Democrats who completely control the state see that as a problem. One party rule is fatal.
Corporations are mobile; corporate headquarters even more so. Enact a new corporate tax, one that isn’t just political-optics and actually has collection-worthy “teeth”, and corporations will relocate out of Illinois. There’s a reason, for instance, why Pleasant Prairie Wisconsin has become such a successful corporate industrial location, and why Wisconsin enjoys such a low unemployment-rate.