I remember when the Lottery first came, and it was sold to the public as a vehicle to pay for education.
Not a DIME went to education.
Now the teachers unions are pissed about not enough tax revenue going to keep their pensions afloat and the state has just imposed another property tax hike to cover it while the state is bleeding residents to the tune of thousands per month. I've never seen as many single family homes up for sale in my sister's neighborhood as I saw when I was up there visiting last week. Malls are empty. Large retailers are shuttered - and those are in suburban areas.
And still taxes are going up again:
Chicago homeowners are about to get whacked with a 10 percent increase in their property taxes.What is funny is comments like this from your typical Chicagoland Democrat resident:
Everyone knew this was coming. The city needs to pay its pensions. That's the end of it. By all means, if you want to live out your right-wing fantasies, move to whatever low-tax, flyover wasteland you like. Just get the hell out of IL and let the people who care about the state try to fix the place.
Because the fact is, there are exactly six places in this nation that matter. They are, in order, NYC, SF, LA, DC, Boston and Seattle. And what do they have in common? A focus on the public good, an adherence to quality urbanism and public services, and a global outlook. Between them, these places attract one hundred percent of this nation's A-talent. They're the bright points in a picture of decline: obesity, dropping life expectancies, McJobs, stagnant wages, destroyed environments, opioid dependency.
Chicago can re-join this group if it sees out its pain and doubles down on its strengths as a globally-focused metropolis. If it adopts the nonsense spouted by the Limbaugh acolytes around here, it'll be just another dire interior wasteland that talented people move from.
But hey, at least it'll have nice low taxes and policies that punish those people, to the satisfaction of the mediocre residents who choose to stay.They are too stupid to realize that it's the tax contributors to their utopia who are now broke and leaving their failed state, but what I find interesting is the hatred they exhibit for "low tax wastelands".
People who do not think a civil war is going to happen are not paying any attention at all.
