Chart by Quizmaster First published: Tuesday August 3rd, 2021
Since peaking in 1950, the city of Chicago has lost nearly 1 million residents. For a long time, the urban area continued to grow while the city shrank. Now the urban area is shrinking as well.
I'm on the record as being somewhat pessimistic about Chicago's future. Unfortunately, political corruption has led to high crime, high taxes, and poor public services. People who care about these things don't protest - they just move to a different state. The Chicago area is losing more than 20,000 people every year.
All these people leaving simply entrenches the political machine and means there are fewer people to bear the astounding cost of overgenerous public pensions. It's a viscous cycle that will take extreme political change to overcome. It will get worse before it gets better.
Illinois really needs to take charge of this situation. If they don't take action now, Chicago is probably going to be a stronghold for Drug-Trafficking, Crime and Gangs.
Doesn't like 1/3 of the state's taxes go to benefits and pensions for state government retirees? That's a huge disadvantage to overcome, especially considering a bunch of those retirees are living in lower-tax states like Florida, so the tax collections are getting spent there.
If you have that eating up such a huge chunk of the budget, it's hard to do any sort of stimulus. The national average is around 5%.
All these people leaving simply entrenches the political machine and means there are fewer people to bear the astounding cost of overgenerous public pensions. It's a viscous cycle that will take extreme political change to overcome. It will get worse before it gets better.
If you have that eating up such a huge chunk of the budget, it's hard to do any sort of stimulus. The national average is around 5%.