-- 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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This is an embarrassingly subjective study, without scientific rigor but classified as “research” by incestuous undereducated co-conspirators to prop each other up throughout mutually-agreed standards of academic mediocrity. . Assertions made in the first 25 pages of text declare that “down-staters” are fantastical-thinking, bigoted ignorant gap-tooth yokels. As a commenter pointed out below, economically destructive but politically-friendly-to-regime entities take vast sums of State funding (Universities, prisons, parks,, and roads important to bring Chicago what it needs). To paraphrase the immortal words of Henny Youngman: “Take your prisons…please.” The study declares that Downstate failed to develop, like that is a failure… Read more »
Every other year this goofy Paul Simon Institute produce this kind of report – spreading taxes and expenditure across downstate like peanut butter to say ‘Hey, you guys in Downstate (which is like 85% of the land mass of Illinois) get more’ Ok, move UIUC and it’s +40,000 students to Chicago. The average downstater gets next to nothing for his Illinois taxes. Just look at the dang roads!
And the prisons too obviously we don’t want them in Naperville. Paul simon was a dirt ball totally partisan democrat.
I would like to have the ability to see just what is and isn’t included in these numbers. An example would be school funding where Chicago gets considerably more per student than my local district does among other things.
Note the suburban number. The suburbs voted down the progressive tax, even though they voted for Biden. Since Illinois politicians treat money miserably, it is probably lost to them that the State’s best taxpayers will only take so much, as those taxpayers understood the tax hike was only notionally about taxing the rich.
The downstate numbers don’t surprise me in that there is an entirely different economy of scale in those less densely populated areas. I would not be surprised if other states experience the same disparities.
Not sure if I even believe the figures. Everything is manipulated for partisan issues.