-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Fueled by another stretch of companies predominantly shedding workspace, the suburban office vacancy rate edged up during the first quarter to an all-time high of 32.2% from 32% at the end of 2024, according to data from brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle.
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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Texas and Florida are booming, what is Illinois doing wrong?
Both do not have a personal state income tax.
The rich job creators are pouring into these states.
They are also right to work states, very limited parasitical public sector unions, libertarian leaning supreme courts, trial lawyers’ powers checked. This flows from the fundamental beliefs of the electorate. They are constitutionalists, anti-big government, liberty loving people. Chicagoans and much of northern IL sadly do not come from the same cultural and genetic stock. Only by changing the electorate here can you change the culture. The democrats know this, it’s why they’ve been socially engineering us for close to 100 years and encourage illegal immigration.
There’s bits and pieces everywhere of Illinois’s demise.
There is no end to this. The qualified suburban workforce to fill these offices is shrinking, not growing, as fewer children are born, fewer people relocate, and the replacements are mostly foreign born or can barely speak English.