OT: Illinois fair tax: yes or no?

[wickywack]

Graduated tax is the only tool in our toolbox right now to solve wealth inequality.

I don't think that's entirely true. At least at a national level, you could argue that Scandinavian income tax rates are less graduated and more regressive than US ones. E.g., Denmark has a top rate around 60%, but it kicks in around 80K USD. Any income over ~7K USD is taxed. Denmark also has a VAT (a form a sales tax) of 25%, which most Americans consider regressive.

But the main thing is that taxes are higher across the board and spending is also higher. That spending - on things like health care and post secondary education - is more impactful on the less wealthy. The total sum seems to be better for wealth inequality.

The problem is when people get uberwealthy, the capital gains tax law supercedes all graduated tax laws and we know from things like the panama papers that the really, really wealth are basically lying and cheating on their taxes and not remotely paying what they should.

If you removed the capital gains exception and were able to keep the existing graduated rates and actually collect them legitimately and stop all off-shoring of money and close all the other loop holes so that the rich actually had to pay their graduated tax rates, then I think that might actually be enough to solve the problem, if not, it'd sure make it a lot closer than currently.

Of course no one in Washington is even looking at removing the capital gains rate, and we don't remotely collect all the taxes we should from the uber wealthy (say top .1% or maybe even .01%, we probably get more than our fair share for the top 1% excluding those super wealthy individuals).

If you mean folks should pay (higher) ordinary income tax instead of (lower) long term capital gains / qualified dividend rates, then I certainly agree. From a fairness standpoint, income, whether it be from labor or capital, is income. If you're sufficiently wealthy, you've got tools to change the same income from one form to the other to game the system. Sadly, it doesn't seem like many countries unify it all though.

[moorhosj]

I fled Chicago 15 years ago, for winterless Texas. All the time we've been down here a succession of our Governors have been able to entice businesses of all sizes to relocate down here where we have streamline regulations and no income tax. Just this year we've added a Tesla mega-factory that's going to employ at least 5,000 people. We also added Charles Schwab which is moving from San Francisco after 45 years. Schwab is merging with TD Ameritrade and the combined company will have a huge Corporate footprint in the Dallas area. We have no personal income tax in Texas. None. Not a fixed rate. Not a graduated rate. And we seem to be able to pay our bills. Perhaps we have fewer government workers retiring with 3 or 4 different government pensions. We go out and get private employers to come down here. That drives prosperity. Not higher taxes. My advice would be to vote the tax down and insist on reducing government spending. Rauner could have done some really good things for Illinois from a financial perspective if the state wasn't run by Mike Madigan. (I am of the view that Madigan has done more financial harm to the State of Illinois than any other individual in the state's history. I am not proud that we graduated from the same high school, albeit in different years. I love John Kass who calls Illinois: Madiganistan.)

Does it? It seems to me, the main difference between Texas and Illinois are oil revenue and spending on public goods.

Oil - Texas has lots of it and has used it very well to entice other businesses to relocate. Essentially using the oil revenue as an offset for tax breaks. The state has been very strategic in using this asset.

Public Goods - Illinois ranks significantly better than Texas in pre-k to 12th grade public education (7th vs. 33rd) [1]. Illinois ranks better than Texas in health care access (19th vs. 47th) and quality (26th vs. 41st) [2]. Illinois ranks far better thank Texas in transportation (24th vs. 47th) [3].

The stats in the public goods area are likely a large reason why the poverty rate in Illinois is about 20% lower than Texas [4]. The median household income is also $5,000 higher at $65,030 vs. $60,629 [5]. This difference is likely higher than the tax difference, meaning you end up with higher net income in Illinois - even after taxes. Neither of these is the "right way" or "wrong way" to run a state, just different ways. Illinois spends more on helping citizens get educated, stay healthy, and move around. Texas focuses on keeping taxes as low as possible, allowing people to opt-in to better schools, healthcare or transportation by paying more money. The data above shows us how it all plays out in reality.

[1] https://www.insider.com/us-states-public-education-system-ranked-us-news-world-report-2019-4#34-texas-17
[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/health-care
[3] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure/transportation
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income

[jmajew]

Graduated tax is the only tool in our toolbox right now to solve wealth inequality.

I don't think that's entirely true. At least at a national level, you could argue that Scandinavian income tax rates are less graduated and more regressive than US ones. E.g., Denmark has a top rate around 60%, but it kicks in around 80K USD. Any income over ~7K USD is taxed. Denmark also has a VAT (a form a sales tax) of 25%, which most Americans consider regressive.

But the main thing is that taxes are higher across the board and spending is also higher. That spending - on things like health care and post secondary education - is more impactful on the less wealthy. The total sum seems to be better for wealth inequality.

The problem is when people get uberwealthy, the capital gains tax law supercedes all graduated tax laws and we know from things like the panama papers that the really, really wealth are basically lying and cheating on their taxes and not remotely paying what they should.

If you removed the capital gains exception and were able to keep the existing graduated rates and actually collect them legitimately and stop all off-shoring of money and close all the other loop holes so that the rich actually had to pay their graduated tax rates, then I think that might actually be enough to solve the problem, if not, it'd sure make it a lot closer than currently.

Of course no one in Washington is even looking at removing the capital gains rate, and we don't remotely collect all the taxes we should from the uber wealthy (say top .1% or maybe even .01%, we probably get more than our fair share for the top 1% excluding those super wealthy individuals).

If you mean folks should pay (higher) ordinary income tax instead of (lower) long term capital gains / qualified dividend rates, then I certainly agree. From a fairness standpoint, income, whether it be from labor or capital, is income. If you're sufficiently wealthy, you've got tools to change the same income from one form to the other to game the system. Sadly, it doesn't seem like many countries unify it all though.

I'm really interested by this and I think the biggest problem is not really the tax rates in the US as a whole. I think the bigger issue on both sides is how the tax revenue we have is spent. Conservatives want to spend a lot of it on defense and not give "free handouts." Liberals want to spend more of it on social programs and give less to defense. Conservatives think higher taxes are bad for the economy as a whole. Liberals actually like defense spending and want to raise taxes to cover their social programs. If you look at Scandinavian countries they spend a much smaller percent of budget on defense, thus they can spend more on social programs. The US issue isn't with the amount of revenue we bring in, it is that we cannot decide what is actually important to us as a whole.

[dougthonus]

I'm really interested by this and I think the biggest problem is not really the tax rates in the US as a whole. I think the bigger issue on both sides is how the tax revenue we have is spent. Conservatives want to spend a lot of it on defense and not give "free handouts." Liberals want to spend more of it on social programs and give less to defense. Conservatives think higher taxes are bad for the economy as a whole. Liberals actually like defense spending and want to raise taxes to cover their social programs. If you look at Scandinavian countries they spend a much smaller percent of budget on defense, thus they can spend more on social programs. The US issue isn't with the amount of revenue we bring in, it is that we cannot decide what is actually important to us as a whole.

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

[jmajew]

I'm really interested by this and I think the biggest problem is not really the tax rates in the US as a whole. I think the bigger issue on both sides is how the tax revenue we have is spent. Conservatives want to spend a lot of it on defense and not give "free handouts." Liberals want to spend more of it on social programs and give less to defense. Conservatives think higher taxes are bad for the economy as a whole. Liberals actually like defense spending and want to raise taxes to cover their social programs. If you look at Scandinavian countries they spend a much smaller percent of budget on defense, thus they can spend more on social programs. The US issue isn't with the amount of revenue we bring in, it is that we cannot decide what is actually important to us as a whole.

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

I've made that same argument to friends many times...never got them to listen to it though.

[Almost Retired]

[quote][/quote]Does it? It seems to me, the main difference between Texas and Illinois are oil revenue and spending on public goods.

Oil - Texas has lots of it and has used it very well to entice other businesses to relocate. Essentially using the oil revenue as an offset for tax breaks. The state has been very strategic in using this asset.

Public Goods - Illinois ranks significantly better than Texas in pre-k to 12th grade public education (7th vs. 33rd) [1]. Illinois ranks better than Texas in health care access (19th vs. 47th) and quality (26th vs. 41st) [2]. Illinois ranks far better thank Texas in transportation (24th vs. 47th) [3].

The stats in the public goods area are likely a large reason why the poverty rate in Illinois is about 20% lower than Texas [4]. The median household income is also $5,000 higher at $65,030 vs. $60,629 [5]. This difference is likely higher than the tax difference, meaning you end up with higher net income in Illinois - even after taxes. Neither of these is the "right way" or "wrong way" to run a state, just different ways. Illinois spends more on helping citizens get educated, stay healthy, and move around. Texas focuses on keeping taxes as low as possible, allowing people to opt-in to better schools, healthcare or transportation by paying more money. The data above shows us how it all plays out in reality[quote]

Having lived in Chicago area for half my life and now in Texas for the past 15 years I think the statistics you mention don't tell the story because they are influenced by other factors. Like Transportion. We live in the Austin area. Rush hour driving is no fun, but it's not nearly as bad as Chicagoland. And that's without adding snow and ice in the winter. Chicagoland does have better public transportation because it's more condensed. Most of Texas is too spread out to make that work for us. Outside the cities I think Texas in general has much better roads than Illinois. Health care access in our larger towns and cities are just fine. And as I work in the health care field it is my observation that hospital quality is very high in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. Our rural areas are not as well served simply because of how spread out Texas is. We have counties bigger than Rhode Island. It's an 800 mile drive from Texarkana to El Paso (east to west). I would match many of our urban Medical Centers against any in Illinois. The Education stats are skewed. Our suburban schools are excellent. As good as any public schools in Illinois. And the University of Texas system is much larger, much better funded, and higher rated in many fields than the Univ of Illinois system. Our health and educational statistics suffer due to the Rio Grande Valley area. Too many non English speaking immigrants down there. Hundreds of thousand of illegals. There is serious poverty down there in the border counties. Cartel crime. Eliminate the Rio Brande Valley and our health, education and education statistics would be much better. We have brutal summers. You have brutal winters. That's a trade off. The difference I see personally is that we can live in a bigger, nicer house, in a safer neighborhood, for less than half the cost of the nicer Chicago suburbs. We sold a house recently for $425 K. 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, huge landscaped lot. Our property taxes were $6k a year. That same house in my sister's town of Downers Grove would have cost us $700-$800K and our property tax on that house would have been closer to $16 K. So we can enjoy a comparable lifestyle for far less money. And we pay no State income tax. To each his own. We loved Chicago as teens and 20 somethings. Got less enamored once we bought a house and were paying those property taxes. Couldn't stand it by the time we turned 50. We'd never move back. Not even if Mayor Munchkin gave us the keys to a free house. Miss the pizza and the Italian beefs and Ricobene's breaded steak sandwiches.

[Leslie Forman]

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

You're basically saying "we can't have nice things here because we're racist."

And it's true.

[League Circles]

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

You're basically saying "we can't have nice things here because we're racist."

And it's true.

Yeah, everything is racist, that's it, yeah. Couldn't be that people speaking different languages and integrating into a society at higher rates than in many countries has economic costs associated (that may be well worth paying).

[dougthonus]

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

You're basically saying "we can't have nice things here because we're racist."

And it's true.

Being racist, in the sense people are subconsciously biased to want things for themselves and those that share similarities (race being one similarity that often confers many other similarities) is definitely part of it. However, government not scaling well and vastly different values and opinions are big parts of it too.

[Leslie Forman]

Being racist, in the sense people are subconsciously biased to want things for themselves and those that share similarities (race being one similarity that often confers many other similarities) is definitely part of it. However, government not scaling well and vastly different values and opinions are big parts of it too.

No, it's mostly that a very large, melanin lacking chunk of this country keeps voting against their own self interests because of their racism. The Southern Strategy worked, works, and will keep working for a long time.

Crystal from Florida reveals all you need to know.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

This is the real reason why we can't have nice things in this country.

[League Circles]

At a governmental level that's true to a degree. Though I think comparing countries of very small size and homogeneous population bases to the US isn't really a reasonable comparison. Having a huge, diverse population definitely creates more challenges.

You're basically saying "we can't have nice things here because we're racist."

And it's true.

Being racist, in the sense people are subconsciously biased to want things for themselves and those that share similarities (race being one similarity that often confers many other similarities) is definitely part of it. However, government not scaling well and vastly different values and opinions are big parts of it too.

I mean, the fact that the largest, most diverse countries in the world happen to have pretty low standards, with China, India and Indonesia being the most glaring examples, while some of the least diverse, smallest population countries have so many superficially enviable standards, pretty much proves the cost of huge diverse populations, but let's ignore all that and act like the a huge diverse country open to lots of immigration (the US) is instead just simply racist, and especially in (laughable) way disproportionately racist relative to other rich countries.

[dougthonus]

Being racist, in the sense people are subconsciously biased to want things for themselves and those that share similarities (race being one similarity that often confers many other similarities) is definitely part of it. However, government not scaling well and vastly different values and opinions are big parts of it too.

No, it's mostly that a very large, melanin lacking chunk of this country keeps voting against their own self interests because of their racism. The Southern Strategy worked, works, and will keep working for a long time.

Crystal from Florida reveals all you need to know.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

This is the real reason why we can't have nice things in this country.

Good to know we can boil down all the countries problems to Crystal in Florida, who made a quote because the roof blew off her house and the economy shut down, and she's in crippling financial pain. She's upset about some group not being hurt, we don't know which group that is, and I don't know why you'd assume its a racist quote vs hurting the wealthy or corporations or foreigners or gays or criminals (she's a prison guard). Sure sounds like she's upset about someone, but there's literally no context around the quote at all that you should infer meaning to it.

Ignore Crystal for the moment though. Just my experience, but I almost never encounter open racism or people who think they are racist or will admit to being racist and certainly none that are proud of being racist, which is how most people view racism. I know such people exist, but that appears to be a small segment of society from my travels, and granted, I don't hang out in the deep south much at all, and wager it might be a lot worse there, but I do travel a fair bit around the country (east coast, west coast, mid west, florida) and literally can probably count the number of times on one hand I met someone openly racist.

The much larger, but still very problematic segment, is the one that is subconsciously racist, gives opportunities to people they look more like, make policies that benefit people more like themselves, don't even understand that they are doing anything discriminatory at all.

[Leslie Forman]

Good to know we can boil down all the countries problems to Crystal in Florida, who made a quote because the roof blew off her house and the economy shut down, and she's in crippling financial pain. She's upset about some group not being hurt, we don't know which group that is, and I don't know why you'd assume its a racist quote vs hurting the wealthy or corporations or foreigners or gays or criminals (she's a prison guard). Sure sounds like she's upset about someone, but there's literally no context around the quote at all that you should infer meaning to it.

Crystal ain't exactly alone. Even after almost four years of nothing but sheer buffoonery, he is still going to get nearly half the votes. Do you think people are doing that because they just love his policies so much? Do you think all these people still saying they'll still vote for the guy even after saying they don't like what he's been doing are doing it because they're doing so awesome in life right now?

I'm sorry but you're incredibly naive if you think she's talking about hurting CEOs or something. Come on.

Ignore Crystal for the moment though. Just my experience, but I almost never encounter open racism or people who think they are racist or will admit to being racist and certainly none that are proud of being racist, which is how most people view racism. I know such people exist, but that appears to be a small segment of society from my travels, and granted, I don't hang out in the deep south much at all, and wager it might be a lot worse there, but I do travel a fair bit around the country (east coast, west coast, mid west, florida) and literally can probably count the number of times on one hand I met someone openly racist.

The much larger, but still very problematic segment, is the one that is subconsciously racist, gives opportunities to people they look more like, make policies that benefit people more like themselves, don't even understand that they are doing anything discriminatory at all.

"Subconscious" or dogwhistle racism is mostly exactly what I'm talking about. It's 2020, of course people aren't going around in public talking like they're in the Klan.

The one Trump supporter I know (pretty hard to find in this city) claims to not see race and treat everyone the same.

He also loves him for going after the "libtards" and thinks antifa and BLM are literally the biggest problem in the world right now. He also loves spewing Candace Owens tweets, saying she represents what black people really think. He thinks Ilhan Omar is a literal terrorist. He is also unemployed and blames the "dummycrats" for not getting the $600 a week he was getting.

These people are not exactly voting for the guy because they're so concerned with the Supreme Court or foreign policy. They're goddamn morons who believe racism doesn't exist anymore and they can't get work because of that damned affirmative action or all those illegals.

That may just be anecdotal…but it sure Fing seems like that is the vast majority of the red block. I mean, there's a pretty sizable amount of them now who literally believe the Obamas and Clintons are running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement…so sure, feel free to replace "racism" with "mental disability" if you'd like.

[League Circles]

Good to know we can boil down all the countries problems to Crystal in Florida, who made a quote because the roof blew off her house and the economy shut down, and she's in crippling financial pain. She's upset about some group not being hurt, we don't know which group that is, and I don't know why you'd assume its a racist quote vs hurting the wealthy or corporations or foreigners or gays or criminals (she's a prison guard). Sure sounds like she's upset about someone, but there's literally no context around the quote at all that you should infer meaning to it.

Crystal ain't exactly alone. Even after almost four years of nothing but sheer buffoonery, he is still going to get nearly half the votes. Do you think people are doing that because they just love his policies so much? Do you think all these people still saying they'll still vote for the guy even after saying they don't like what he's been doing are doing it because they're doing so awesome in life right now?

I'm sorry but you're incredibly naive if you think she's talking about hurting CEOs or something. Come on.

Ignore Crystal for the moment though. Just my experience, but I almost never encounter open racism or people who think they are racist or will admit to being racist and certainly none that are proud of being racist, which is how most people view racism. I know such people exist, but that appears to be a small segment of society from my travels, and granted, I don't hang out in the deep south much at all, and wager it might be a lot worse there, but I do travel a fair bit around the country (east coast, west coast, mid west, florida) and literally can probably count the number of times on one hand I met someone openly racist.

The much larger, but still very problematic segment, is the one that is subconsciously racist, gives opportunities to people they look more like, make policies that benefit people more like themselves, don't even understand that they are doing anything discriminatory at all.

"Subconscious" or dogwhistle racism is mostly exactly what I'm talking about. It's 2020, of course people aren't going around in public talking like they're in the Klan.

The one Trump supporter I know (pretty hard to find in this city) claims to not see race and treat everyone the same.

He also loves him for going after the "libtards" and thinks antifa and BLM are literally the biggest problem in the world right now. He also loves spewing Candace Owens tweets, saying she represents what black people really think. He thinks Ilhan Omar is a literal terrorist. He is also unemployed and blames the "dummycrats" for not getting the $600 a week he was getting.

These people are not exactly voting for the guy because they're so concerned with the Supreme Court or foreign policy. They're goddamn morons who believe racism doesn't exist anymore and they can't get work because of that damned affirmative action or all those illegals.

That may just be anecdotal…but it sure Fing seems like that is the vast majority of the red block. I mean, there's a pretty sizable amount of them now who literally believe the Obamas and Clintons are running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement…so sure, feel free to replace "racism" with "mental disability" if you'd like.

LMAO at your idea of Trump voters based on one person you know. I'm not, and have never been a Trump supporter, and have never even voted Republican for president, but I know a significant number of Trump voters. They generally despise him. They are successful business people.

Also funny that you think Trump got, or will get, half the votes, implying that half the country supports him. It's basically 1/4 of eligible voters. Half of eligible voters don't support either party/candidate and too many democrats think that it's just because of a failure to "get out the vote", that they're all young progressives who are too lazy to vote, instead of asking if maybe it's because half the country is sickened by both parties/candidates and refuse to support them by voting for them.

Anyway, the point about diverse populations being theoretically less efficient in terms of economic production isn't about race, it's really about language first and culture second. If you ignore those costs (wonderful as they may be to incur), you'll come to false conclusions.

[dougthonus]

Crystal ain't exactly alone. Even after almost four years of nothing but sheer buffoonery, he is still going to get nearly half the votes. Do you think people are doing that because they just love his policies so much? Do you think all these people still saying they'll still vote for the guy even after saying they don't like what he's been doing are doing it because they're doing so awesome in life right now?

I'm sorry but you're incredibly naive if you think she's talking about hurting CEOs or something. Come on.

As noted, I wouldn't assume CEOs, but I don't know why you'd assume some particular racial group either, and yes, I'm sure there are plenty of open racists out there, but they still seem like a tiny minority relative to people whom exhibit subconscious bias, and I think their impact is less as well.

"Subconscious" or dogwhistle racism is mostly exactly what I'm talking about. It's 2020, of course people aren't going around in public talking like they're in the Klan.

The one Trump supporter I know (pretty hard to find in this city) claims to not see race and treat everyone the same.

He also loves him for going after the "libtards" and thinks antifa and BLM are literally the biggest problem in the world right now. He also loves spewing Candace Owens tweets, saying she represents what black people really think. He thinks Ilhan Omar is a literal terrorist. He is also unemployed and blames the "dummycrats" for not getting the $600 a week he was getting.

These people are not exactly voting for the guy because they're so concerned with the Supreme Court or foreign policy. They're goddamn morons who believe racism doesn't exist anymore and they can't get work because of that damned affirmative action or all those illegals.

That may just be anecdotal…but it sure Fing seems like that is the vast majority of the red block. I mean, there's a pretty sizable amount of them now who literally believe the Obamas and Clintons are running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement…so sure, feel free to replace "racism" with "mental disability" if you'd like.

I don't think dogwhistle racism is the same thing as subconscious bias exactly. Often those are people whom are overtly racist, but they recognize that society has moved against them in such away that this isn't cool anymore. Subconscious bias is people whom legitimately don't feel they're behaving in a discriminatory way at all, but their beliefs are still subject to be biased towards things that benefit them or people like them, and while race isn't the only factor in that similarity, often race composes cultural values, socioeconomic values, and other similarities that end up making it the same thing.

Though I agree that dogwhistle racists are still a problem, it's the people whom don't think they're racist but still act in ways that are discriminatory that are more problematic to me.

As for your description, that doesn't actually match any of the Republicans or Trump voters I know. It feels like there are lots of examples like that, but the majority of Republicans I know are wealthy white males that are voting in their very real financial interest.

[Almost Retired]

I will only say that 95% of ALL the voters are not really as informed as they should be. If they are relying on the nightly news and their local newspaper they are being fed an agenda. They are voting primarily based on emotion, not analysis. A disinterested judge of outcomes could easily lead to a conclusion that Trump, who according to Leslie Forman has displayed nothing but buffoonery for 4 years, did more for minorities in his 4 years than Obama and Biden did in 8 years. Before the Wuhan virus minority unemployment was trending lower. Trump made a 10 year commitment to funding the Traditionally Black Colleges and Universities. Obama/Biden never did that. Trump got the "First Step Act" passed, which has resulted in the release of many inmates serving disproportionally long prison sentences. Biden was the champion of the "Three Strikes" Crime Bill in the 1990s. Trump put in place the Opportunity Zone initiative to try to encourage investment in minority communities. Is Trump perfect? No. Of course not. But he has made genuine efforts to improve minority opportunities. The facts, not emotions, point to that conclusion. Could more be done? Of course. But strides were made. Come November 4th I think the exit pols are going to show that Trump got a larger percentage of minority votes than any Republican in history. Not a majority of those votes. But a higher percentage. Even a rap artist like Ice-T thinks he was treated with more attention and respect by Trump's people for his reform ideas than he was by the Democrats. Those are his words. Not mine. I'm a Libertarian at heart. And I prefer analysis over emotions. And I vote accordingly.

[prolific passer]

Illinois has a rich guy as governor. Think he is gonna tax himself that much?

[League Circles]

Illinois has a rich guy as governor. Think he is gonna tax himself that much?

Don't confuse wealth with income. Many extremely wealthy people don't have very much income because they don't need it so they don't structure their finances that way.

[Leslie Forman]

I don't think dogwhistle racism is the same thing as subconscious bias exactly. Often those are people whom are overtly racist, but they recognize that society has moved against them in such away that this isn't cool anymore. Subconscious bias is people whom legitimately don't feel they're behaving in a discriminatory way at all, but their beliefs are still subject to be biased towards things that benefit them or people like them, and while race isn't the only factor in that similarity, often race composes cultural values, socioeconomic values, and other similarities that end up making it the same thing.

Though I agree that dogwhistle racists are still a problem, it's the people whom don't think they're racist but still act in ways that are discriminatory that are more problematic to me.

That's exactly what dogwhistle racists are, though. Subconsciously racist. People who genuinely think they're totally not racist at all, but feel like something really needs to be done about "welfare queens" and that every neighborhood in the city that's not majority white is "ghetto." Basically your Donald Sterling types who think blacks and browns are totally on the same page as them, rather than the Marge Schotts of the country (of which, make no mistake, there are still a LOT of in this country).

As for your description, that doesn't actually match any of the Republicans or Trump voters I know. It feels like there are lots of examples like that, but the majority of Republicans I know are wealthy white males that are voting in their very real financial interest.

I don't doubt there are selfish a-holes who just don't want to pay more taxes and don't give a crap about anybody else. They basically own every pro sports franchise, after all. But that's a small part of the base. The rest of the base, the ones that will absolutely never be rich enough for the tax brackets to ever matter to them, are not voting for that side because they want to improve the country.

They want to vote for someone who will "do something about all those _________." (insert dogwhistle or straight up bullhorn term)

[moorhosj]

Having lived in Chicago area for half my life and now in Texas for the past 15 years I think the statistics you mention don't tell the story because they are influenced by other factors. Like Transportion. We live in the Austin area. Rush hour driving is no fun, but it's not nearly as bad as Chicagoland. And that's without adding snow and ice in the winter. Chicagoland does have better public transportation because it's more condensed. Most of Texas is too spread out to make that work for us. Outside the cities I think Texas in general has much better roads than Illinois. Health care access in our larger towns and cities are just fine. And as I work in the health care field it is my observation that hospital quality is very high in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. Our rural areas are not as well served simply because of how spread out Texas is. We have counties bigger than Rhode Island. It's an 800 mile drive from Texarkana to El Paso (east to west). I would match many of our urban Medical Centers against any in Illinois. The Education stats are skewed. Our suburban schools are excellent. As good as any public schools in Illinois. And the University of Texas system is much larger, much better funded, and higher rated in many fields than the Univ of Illinois system. Our health and educational statistics suffer due to the Rio Grande Valley area. Too many non English speaking immigrants down there. Hundreds of thousand of illegals. There is serious poverty down there in the border counties. Cartel crime. Eliminate the Rio Brande Valley and our health, education and education statistics would be much better. We have brutal summers. You have brutal winters. That's a trade off. The difference I see personally is that we can live in a bigger, nicer house, in a safer neighborhood, for less than half the cost of the nicer Chicago suburbs. We sold a house recently for $425 K. 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, huge landscaped lot. Our property taxes were $6k a year. That same house in my sister's town of Downers Grove would have cost us $700-$800K and our property tax on that house would have been closer to $16 K. So we can enjoy a comparable lifestyle for far less money. And we pay no State income tax. To each his own. We loved Chicago as teens and 20 somethings. Got less enamored once we bought a house and were paying those property taxes. Couldn't stand it by the time we turned 50. We'd never move back. Not even if Mayor Munchkin gave us the keys to a free house. Miss the pizza and the Italian beefs and Ricobene's breaded steak sandwiches.

In lieu of providing any actual data to support your stance, you have a bunch of anecdotes and opinions (from 15 years ago). It’s ok to prefer living somewhere else, but just hand waving away actual facts kind of shows your bias. For example, I live in a $600k single-family home in Chicago (Old Irving Park neighborhood). I pay $7k in property taxes and have good public schools. Can you share the town or neighborhood of your recently sold house? It's hard to compare it to Downers Grove homes without knowing the average income, education level, school districts, etc.

“The education stats are skewed.” - How? By looking at the whole state rather than just suburbs? Sounds like the opposite of skewed to me.

“Eliminate the Rio Grande Area and out stats look better.” - Why would we ignore parts of a state when measuring the impact of a states policies? What an odd comment to make while trying to explain how great your state is.

Medical centers - Northwestern is ranked #10 in the country and Rush is ranked #17. Houston Methodist is #20. https://health.usnews.com/health-care/best-hospitals/articles/best-hospitals-honor-roll-and-overview

I get that you prefer Texas, more power to you, but at least provide some data for your stances. Trying to throw out parts of the state to make it seem better pretty much proves my point that taxes are so low because the state doesn’t invest in things that make working class people’s lives better (transportation, healthcare, education).