OT: Illinois fair tax: yes or no?

[CashConsider]

So we'll either have just delayed slightly everyone getting a 8-10% tax rate, or systematic pension reform will be addressed. Allowing the graduated rate won't really change their inability to tax their way out of the liabilities. I don't ultimately think this amendment failing will force current lawmakers hands at other reforms. It will just mean raised rates for all or severe cuts to services.

So I ultimately chose to treat it as a standalone issue. I can see why some can't clear that hurdle. Graduated rate structures can be the fair and right design for a income tax code, and our current lawmakers can be inept and short-sided and use it the wrong way. Both are true and I ultimately didn't feel the need to validate both together.

I totally get this too. I think graduates rates are more fair as well. I'm pro-graduated rates even if at some point my rate went up some, I think its better for the country.

My main fear is that I think we're paying way too much taxes for the services we get already due to poor spending. It's like if you have a gambling addict friend that is maybe going to lose his house due to his bad decisions, so you pay his mortgage but he doesn't quit gambling, and a month later you just need to pay his mortgage again, and instead of him addressing the root problem, you just keep giving him money.

There's no reason our state can't run on probably 15-20% less than current taxes except pensions/corruption/bad decisions. I'm against any move that raises taxes until those issues are addressed, because once we raise taxes then I don't think we will attempt to address those issues anymore, because we will have taken the blow from the dire situation.

We're on path to be one of the worst states in the country for total tax liability (we're already top 10), and so if virtually every other state in the union can figure this out better than us, then I'd push back and say figure out your spending before trying to tax us even worse. I'd guess if this passes, that Illinois, within 10 years, will challenge as the worst state to live in for people making over 150k a year. If that's the case, how many of those people will stay? Especially as jobs become more and more remote.

It will eat away at the tax base, and you will be left with Detroit.

Granted, not passing this doesn't solve the problem either. To solve the problem you need to fix spending. 100% of our focus should be on fixing spending and most of that should be on pension reform and removing corruption (good luck with the second of those things of course).

Anyway, I totally get where you're coming from, I'm torn on it too, because I do think the graduated rate is more fair and is what we should be doing and trying to pressure them into doing the right thing by denying them the easy way out may end up in just having them doing an even worse thing.

Without pension reform we are continually sitting down and opening ourselves to continued tax increases. Graduated is one thing, but all Illinois politicians are willing to look at is as a revenue issue and not a spending. My hope is that if this doesn't pass that spending will become an issue folks will look at.

But again the unions being as strong as they are, pension reform will never be on the table. That's my fear.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

Without pension reform we are continually sitting down and opening ourselves to continued tax increases. Graduated is one thing, but all Illinois politicians are willing to look at is as a revenue issue and not a spending. My hope is that if this doesn't pass that spending will become an issue folks will look at.

But again the unions being as strong as they are, pension reform will never be on the table. That's my fear.

https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/budget/documents/budget%20book/fy%202019/fiscal-year-2019-operating-budget-book.pdf
Go to page 33 of this link. It tells you just about everything The spending problem is almost entirely pensions. If anything, spending elsewhere is deficient.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-fiscal-briefs/illinois
This is another useful link about spending/budgets to add some perspective (though with slightly more dated info). One really important thing to remember to about IL is that revenues are hugely favored towards property taxes which are all local and primarily spent on education. So people need to realize when they are talking/complaining about their politicians in IL, you are just as much talking about your school board, county commissioners, etc as you are about governor, senators, etc. This structure of taxes was set up long ago. Our state politicians may not have the political will to try and change it, but its also an inherited mess. Its also a very regressive system. Wealthy places are in a pretty good spot to fund their schools, whereas low income areas struggle to fund and tax their limited population pretty high property tax rates to provide merely adequate education and other services.

[dougthonus]

Without pension reform we are continually sitting down and opening ourselves to continued tax increases. Graduated is one thing, but all Illinois politicians are willing to look at is as a revenue issue and not a spending. My hope is that if this doesn't pass that spending will become an issue folks will look at.

But again the unions being as strong as they are, pension reform will never be on the table. That's my fear.

https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/budget/documents/budget%20book/fy%202019/fiscal-year-2019-operating-budget-book.pdf
Go to page 33 of this link. It tells you just about everything The spending problem is almost entirely pensions. If anything, spending elsewhere is deficient.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-fiscal-briefs/illinois
This is another useful link about spending/budgets to add some perspective (though with slightly more dated info). One really important thing to remember to about IL is that revenues are hugely favored towards property taxes which are all local and primarily spent on education. So people need to realize when they are talking/complaining about their politicians in IL, you are just as much talking about your school board, county commissioners, etc as you are about governor, senators, etc. This structure of taxes was set up long ago. Our state politicians may not have the political will to try and change it, but its also an inherited mess. Its also a very regressive system. Wealthy places are in a pretty good spot to fund their schools, whereas low income areas struggle to fund and tax their limited population pretty high property tax rates to provide merely adequate education and other services.

What I think will happen eventually is the state will privatize education and say you are no longer state employees, then the private company will kill the union, make things more virtual, bring costs WAY WAY down and the teachers union will be crushed instead of living with reasonable concessions now.

That's the problem with unions to a large degree historically is the fight so hard for the rights of their members that they win the fight and kill what is paying them. At the same time, no unions means much lower wages for working class people and is a big negative. You really need both companies / unions to come to agreements that are mutually beneficial and understand each others needs, but it doesn't seem to happen that way much.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

Without pension reform we are continually sitting down and opening ourselves to continued tax increases. Graduated is one thing, but all Illinois politicians are willing to look at is as a revenue issue and not a spending. My hope is that if this doesn't pass that spending will become an issue folks will look at.

But again the unions being as strong as they are, pension reform will never be on the table. That's my fear.

https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/budget/documents/budget%20book/fy%202019/fiscal-year-2019-operating-budget-book.pdf
Go to page 33 of this link. It tells you just about everything The spending problem is almost entirely pensions. If anything, spending elsewhere is deficient.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-fiscal-briefs/illinois
This is another useful link about spending/budgets to add some perspective (though with slightly more dated info). One really important thing to remember to about IL is that revenues are hugely favored towards property taxes which are all local and primarily spent on education. So people need to realize when they are talking/complaining about their politicians in IL, you are just as much talking about your school board, county commissioners, etc as you are about governor, senators, etc. This structure of taxes was set up long ago. Our state politicians may not have the political will to try and change it, but its also an inherited mess. Its also a very regressive system. Wealthy places are in a pretty good spot to fund their schools, whereas low income areas struggle to fund and tax their limited population pretty high property tax rates to provide merely adequate education and other services.

What I think will happen eventually is the state will privatize education and say you are no longer state employees, then the private company will kill the union, make things more virtual, bring costs WAY WAY down and the teachers union will be crushed instead of living with reasonable concessions now.

That's the problem with unions to a large degree historically is the fight so hard for the rights of their members that they win the fight and kill what is paying them. At the same time, no unions means much lower wages for working class people and is a big negative. You really need both companies / unions to come to agreements that are mutually beneficial and understand each others needs, but it doesn't seem to happen that way much.

I'm biased as I was raised by a father who was in a union (firefighter) and my wife is part of the teachers union.

But its also largely a choice of our country to not prioritize labors/unions. Elsewhere in the developed world union rates are much better off and they prioritize it. Maybe there's something structurally different about our unions in the USA where that balance you described was not historically met, I don't know. But the past 20 years or so, the right has really turned on unions and actively sought measures to weaken them.

As far as education goes and privatization, are you basically referring to a total sell off to the charter school model?

Maybe that will be the path, though for what its worth, charter schools are now seeing teachers unionize I think. Obviously they'll have to go a while to negotiate back up wages and benefits to prior levels, but as long as the source for education is overwhelmingly at the local level, its a ripe situation for large increases because people are more willing to pay more taxes when they stay so local. I guess the only difference is that the pensions (if the new union negotiates one) may then be funded locally instead of at the state level with TRS - which is basically what police and fire pensions are now, and most of those are similarly way underfunded.

[dougthonus]

I'm biased as I was raised by a father who was in a union (firefighter) and my wife is part of the teachers union.

But its also largely a choice of our country to not prioritize labors/unions. Elsewhere in the developed world union rates are much better off and they prioritize it. Maybe there's something structurally different about our unions in the USA where that balance you described was not historically met, I don't know. But the past 20 years or so, the right has really turned on unions and actively sought measures to weaken them.

As far as education goes and privatization, are you basically referring to a total sell off to the charter school model?

Maybe that will be the path, though for what its worth, charter schools are now seeing teachers unionize I think. Obviously they'll have to go a while to negotiate back up wages and benefits to prior levels, but as long as the source for education is overwhelmingly at the local level, its a ripe situation for large increases because people are more willing to pay more taxes when they stay so local. I guess the only difference is that the pensions (if the new union negotiates one) may then be funded locally instead of at the state level with TRS - which is basically what police and fire pensions are now, and most of those are similarly way underfunded.

I think if you did these things in the public sector that you'd massively improve performance and efficiency and costs in the long run:

1: Pensions - replace with fully funded 401ks - Removes underfunding problem, stops pushing penalties on to future generations, allows you to balance your budget appropriately, isn't victim to issues of population size changing. Also pensions incentivize people to stay forever, but people's performance in a job typically declines after five years or so when they get stale. You don't get fresh ideas this way and you don't incentivize the natural turnover that helps keep organizations fresh and thriving.

2: Inability to fire people (teachers have it officially, but nearly all gov jobs are like this unofficially) - Obviously this means over time good employees leave and you are always stuck with bad employees forever if you ever miss on a hire. Your work force quality trends down in this scenario more and more as time goes on.

3: Experienced based instead of performance based pay - This is an extremely antiquated model, and we know performance actually goes down after a certain amount of time within a job. Unless you are tying raises exactly to inflation/cost of living so that they are balanced with living expenses (and new hire salaries), you are frequently paying more money for same or worse performance as time goes on.

[League Circles]

I voted no. It was a legit hard decision. On one hand I want the state to be able to raise more needed revenue and I want lower class working people to get a break from the taxes, but those concerns were marginally outweighed by distrust of how revenue would be spent (and used to justify more overspending), concern that higher income (more productive) people would leave the state in higher numbers which could affect all sorts of industries, and due to general spite over the notion that taxing the rich can solve all of our problems and over the notion that it's so obvious that doing so is "fair".

[stl705]

I don’t agree with the notion of high income households leaving the state with a fairly modest tax hike. Why? Because those said individuals would have already found another reason to leave the state and would already be gone.

I agree that pensions are the biggest issue crippling the state fiscally, and I’m not sure what the answer is but clearly some concessions may need to be made on all sides.

[dougthonus]

I don’t agree with the notion of high income households leaving the state with a fairly modest tax hike. Why? Because those said individuals would have already found another reason to leave the state and would already be gone.

I agree that pensions are the biggest issue crippling the state fiscally, and I’m not sure what the answer is but clearly some concessions may need to be made on all sides.

Illinois has lost more residents than any other state in the past decade. Taxes / costs / worsening business environment are all big reasons why. It's not weather, no other midwestern state lost population this year and none are losing population regularly.

If we had gained the nationwide average in population instead, we would have more tax revenue than the current short fall is expected to raise. So yes, tax hikes do cause people to flee the state, and that puts a larger burden on the people left in the state, and yes it is making a big difference, and its not just about "rich people won't leave", its also about "rich people won't come".

[jmajew]

I don’t agree with the notion of high income households leaving the state with a fairly modest tax hike. Why? Because those said individuals would have already found another reason to leave the state and would already be gone.

I agree that pensions are the biggest issue crippling the state fiscally, and I’m not sure what the answer is but clearly some concessions may need to be made on all sides.

Illinois has lost more residents than any other state in the past decade. Taxes / costs / worsening business environment are all big reasons why. It's not weather, no other midwestern state lost population this year and none are losing population regularly.

If we had gained the nationwide average in population instead, we would have more tax revenue than the current short fall is expected to raise. So yes, tax hikes do cause people to flee the state, and that puts a larger burden on the people left in the state, and yes it is making a big difference, and its not just about "rich people won't leave", its also about "rich people won't come".

That is a big reason why New York, Connecticut, New Jersey are all seeing their populations shrink. If you have high taxes and poor weather why stay? New Jersey's was so incredibly scared when one billionaire, David Tepper, left for Florida. He actually moved back to New Jersey in 2020 and it cost him $120 million a year, but he moved to a 0 tax state. The uber wealthy can generally afford higher taxes. Those making 500k a year may not be as fortunate and living in low tax states can be very enticing.

[dougthonus]

That is a big reason why New York, Connecticut, New Jersey are all seeing their populations shrink. If you have high taxes and poor weather why stay? New Jersey's was so incredibly scared when one billionaire, David Tepper, left for Florida. He actually moved back to New Jersey in 2020 and it cost him $120 million a year, but he moved to a 0 tax state. The uber wealthy can generally afford higher taxes. Those making 500k a year may not be as fortunate and living in low tax states can be very enticing.

I think the 500k year earners are more likely to stay of the two. Billionaires can officially make their residence anywhere.

500k earners (not equity earners, but salary earners) are far more frequently tied to a specific job. It's a much bigger decision for a doctor or lawyer to abandon a practice and try to move to a new state than a billionaire who makes all their money through real estate or equity transactions and gets all their money in capital gains and can own houses in 10 states as they please and make whichever one they want their official residence.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

I don’t agree with the notion of high income households leaving the state with a fairly modest tax hike. Why? Because those said individuals would have already found another reason to leave the state and would already be gone.

I agree that pensions are the biggest issue crippling the state fiscally, and I’m not sure what the answer is but clearly some concessions may need to be made on all sides.

Illinois has lost more residents than any other state in the past decade. Taxes / costs / worsening business environment are all big reasons why. It's not weather, no other midwestern state lost population this year and none are losing population regularly.

If we had gained the nationwide average in population instead, we would have more tax revenue than the current short fall is expected to raise. So yes, tax hikes do cause people to flee the state, and that puts a larger burden on the people left in the state, and yes it is making a big difference, and its not just about "rich people won't leave", its also about "rich people won't come".

The last line is actually hitting the nail on the head. I saw somewhere recently that Illinois out-migration isn't bad, on par with many of its neighbors. The in-migration is where we're pitiful.

[MrSparkle]

There’s no argument. Every retiree I know is either leaving or thinking to leave Chicago/IL. Even my folks, they love the city (friends, culture) and lived here almost 40 years- they’re crunching the numbers and just not seeing the point in spending so much on the city with a theoretically low “return” (ie seeing their tax dollars go to useful things like infrastructure and cleaning up the city). The budget seems gridlocked, and it’s only going to get worse as covid lingers.

So yeah, besides the unimaginably rich person who would lose several million due to this changed tax code, I also think a lot of middle-class retirees would think “I’m out of here.” They’re not gonna foot the bill for a declining public infrastructure that they’re not even making use of (schools, police, pensions).

[Friend_Of_Haley]

https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/setting-the-record-straight-on-illinois-migration-2c905c9e2ac

The migration issue is a lot more complex than your uncle complaining on Facebook would have you believe.

Ideas;
1. A graduated tax system that actually gives substantial tax relief the the bottom quartile and bottom half of income earners
2. Property tax reform which (1) redistributes wealth more proportionally to fund strong education across the state ,(2) sets caps on the amount of growth of property tax year over year, and (3) increase the homeowner exemption
2a. (I think part of this is shifting a decent portion of property tax to the state because right now our own communities compete directly with each other on these subsidies, which is how you attract businesses. Hoffman Estates poaching a corp HQ from Itasca doesn't do anything for the state, net. So the state can still offer those breaks at a state level, but not let corps just bid our cities against each other)
3. Pension reform which frees up budget for growing our budget on services, including higher education and attracting top flight young higher education talent to our state schools (U of I does well, but that's it) - and then put a plan in place to retain that talent.

I could go off on lots of other crazier ideas, but those would probably be the top 3. While the amendment only covers one half of one of those, that's why I ultimately decided on yes.

[dougthonus]

There’s no argument. Every retiree I know is either leaving or thinking to leave Chicago/IL. Even my folks, they love the city (friends, culture) and lived here almost 40 years- they’re crunching the numbers and just not seeing the point in spending so much on the city with a theoretically low “return” (ie seeing their tax dollars go to useful things like infrastructure and cleaning up the city). The budget seems gridlocked, and it’s only going to get worse as covid lingers.

So yeah, besides the unimaginably rich person who would lose several million due to this changed tax code, I also think a lot of middle-class retirees would think “I’m out of here.” They’re not gonna foot the bill for a declining public infrastructure that they’re not even making use of (schools, police, pensions).

Retirees leaving isn't really as big problem. You don't want working people leaving. Though it still is a problem.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

There’s no argument. Every retiree I know is either leaving or thinking to leave Chicago/IL. Even my folks, they love the city (friends, culture) and lived here almost 40 years- they’re crunching the numbers and just not seeing the point in spending so much on the city with a theoretically low “return” (ie seeing their tax dollars go to useful things like infrastructure and cleaning up the city). The budget seems gridlocked, and it’s only going to get worse as covid lingers.

So yeah, besides the unimaginably rich person who would lose several million due to this changed tax code, I also think a lot of middle-class retirees would think “I’m out of here.” They’re not gonna foot the bill for a declining public infrastructure that they’re not even making use of (schools, police, pensions).

Honestly, for many retirement age people, here's what's happening.

We spent decades spending lavishly for great services and not paying for the true cost, kicking the can down the road. Part of that was low income tax (good for all) and high property taxes (good for your local community and the schools that your children likely benefited from). Now the bill is due and they don't want to help pay for all that stuff they got the past 20-30 years and don't see benefit for anymore. They may own their home outright and that property tax bill looks large now that its not part of the mortgage payment. Also, now those same formerly great services are being crunched because our books are a mess and our credit nearly junk.

But yet, as the link I posted discussed, its really a bigger issue that we aren't attracting new people or new businesses. The number of retirees leaving isn't significant, if we were doing a good job replacing them with working-age population and families.

[dougthonus]

https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/setting-the-record-straight-on-illinois-migration-2c905c9e2ac

The migration issue is a lot more complex than your uncle complaining on Facebook would have you believe.

Ideas;
1. A graduated tax system that actually gives substantial tax relief the the bottom quartile and bottom half of income earners
2. Property tax reform which (1) redistributes wealth more proportionally to fund strong education across the state ,(2) sets caps on the amount of growth of property tax year over year, and (3) increase the homeowner exemption
2a. (I think part of this is shifting a decent portion of property tax to the state because right now our own communities compete directly with each other on these subsidies, which is how you attract businesses. Hoffman Estates poaching a corp HQ from Itasca doesn't do anything for the state, net. So the state can still offer those breaks at a state level, but not let corps just bid our cities against each other)
3. Pension reform which frees up budget for growing our budget on services, including higher education and attracting top flight young higher education talent to our state schools (U of I does well, but that's it) - and then put a plan in place to retain that talent.

I could go off on lots of other crazier ideas, but those would probably be the top 3. While the amendment only covers one half of one of those, that's why I ultimately decided on yes.

I posted earlier about this, but I think there is a fundamental underpinning in how public service jobs works that needs to be changed:

Pension -> 401k
Salary by performance not time of service
No tenure / hard to fire rules, in fact no one allowed to hold a job for more than seven years (or at least heavily incentivized to switch like no raises after seven years)

Everything about the way we pay government employees incentivizes bad employees and disincentivizes good employees:
Performance doesn't matter for salary
Can't be fired without gross incompetence
Massive benefit for never leaving your job

Quality people don't want to live in a world with #1 and #2 and are likely to leave for better opportunities and have less value in the pension than the 401k. Awful employees love these rules, get the job, do the absolute minimum and you are set for life.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/setting-the-record-straight-on-illinois-migration-2c905c9e2ac

The migration issue is a lot more complex than your uncle complaining on Facebook would have you believe.

Ideas;
1. A graduated tax system that actually gives substantial tax relief the the bottom quartile and bottom half of income earners
2. Property tax reform which (1) redistributes wealth more proportionally to fund strong education across the state ,(2) sets caps on the amount of growth of property tax year over year, and (3) increase the homeowner exemption
2a. (I think part of this is shifting a decent portion of property tax to the state because right now our own communities compete directly with each other on these subsidies, which is how you attract businesses. Hoffman Estates poaching a corp HQ from Itasca doesn't do anything for the state, net. So the state can still offer those breaks at a state level, but not let corps just bid our cities against each other)
3. Pension reform which frees up budget for growing our budget on services, including higher education and attracting top flight young higher education talent to our state schools (U of I does well, but that's it) - and then put a plan in place to retain that talent.

I could go off on lots of other crazier ideas, but those would probably be the top 3. While the amendment only covers one half of one of those, that's why I ultimately decided on yes.

I posted earlier about this, but I think there is a fundamental underpinning in how public service jobs works that needs to be changed:

Pension -> 401k
Salary by performance not time of service
No tenure / hard to fire rules, in fact no one allowed to hold a job for more than seven years (or at least heavily incentivized to switch like no raises after seven years)

Everything about the way we pay government employees incentivizes bad employees and disincentivizes good employees:
Performance doesn't matter for salary
Can't be fired without gross incompetence
Massive benefit for never leaving your job

Quality people don't want to live in a world with #1 and #2 and are likely to leave for better opportunities and have less value in the pension than the 401k. Awful employees love these rules, get the job, do the absolute minimum and you are set for life.

I'll just say the performance thing in schools is really controversial. School outcomes have so much that go into it, not the least of which is the socio-economics of the surrounding community.

The 401k verse pension thing I think is a bit of a false choice. Private corps went away from pensions because they weren't as good for the bottom line. I think we should normalize labor being treated better than capital in this country. Maybe that's not pensions, that's fine. But laborers should be getting more of the profit pie. A 401k doesn't do that. Your other reform ideas are basically just low key union-busting ideas. I get that the private sector has been basically decimated by union busting and now people think that's just normal and are ready to come for the public unions, but good union jobs provide for a strong middle class. We should be going back the other way and fighting for strong unions and a strong middle class back into the private sector rather than just letting it come for the public sector unions too.

Now, any benefit has to of course be weighed against profits, and whether its a private company or the politicians, future promises have to be actually funded, but I really hate any reform aimed at weakening the collective labor power. It will be real-wage decreases and more inequality that ultimately follows, while corporate profits prosper.

[dougthonus]

I'll just say the performance thing in schools is really controversial. School outcomes have so much that go into it, not the least of which is the socio-economics of the surrounding community.

You can measure performance in many ways, you don't need to make it based purely on numbers of the students but can take into account other factors. You can even measure only against teachers within the same district, much like companies don't measure their employees against those at other firms, they only measure them against their other employees.

The 401k verse pension thing I think is a bit of a false choice. Private corps went away from pensions because they weren't as good for the bottom line. I think we should normalize labor being treated better than capital in this country. Maybe that's not pensions, that's fine. But laborers should be getting more of the profit pie. A 401k doesn't do that. Your other reform ideas are basically just low key union-busting ideas. I get that the private sector has been basically decimated by union busting and now people think that's just normal and are ready to come for the public unions, but good union jobs provide for a strong middle class. We should be going back the other way and fighting for strong unions and a strong middle class back into the private sector rather than just letting it come for the public sector unions too.

A pension and a 401k are just different systems to pay into retirement pools. One is paid up front and has a hard cost directly related to the year it was achieved, one kicks the can down the road. You can make a lousy pension (10% of your average salary over your 30 year career) or a great pension (what we have now) just like you can a 401k (200% matching up to any amount vs 0% matching). The 401k is set up to attract good employees and encourage turnover which is good for companies, the pension is not.

In a way, I agree with your take on unions, but the problem is unions absolutely killed a lot of industries by making them non competitive. Right now the public unions are literally destroying the state of Illinois and bringing it to a point of insolvency, so while I agree we need to come up with ways to benefit labor which will help the lower/middle classes, unions don't seem to be a good answer to that because they don't stop at reasonable. Lack of unions also don't seem to be a good answer to that, and in fact we don't have a good answer to that which I know of.

Now, any benefit has to of course be weighed against profits, and whether its a private company or the politicians, future promises have to be actually funded, but I really hate any reform aimed at weakening the collective labor power. It will be real-wage decreases and more inequality that ultimately follows, while corporate profits prosper.

Well the direct payers of the massive free handout, life time employment, ridiculously better than I'll ever see retirement benefits is the citizens of Illinois, not corporations. Corporations are also fleeing our state because we're making it so unattractive for businesses which will make things worse.

Chicago is well on its way to becoming Detroit right now. Not sure how long it will take, but the value of it is becoming less and less and less, and as it becomes less, people don't pay the premium to live here, and as they stop paying that premium, we need more money, so we charge people a higher premium, which becomes even less attractive.

It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know how you stop it except first fixing costs around the public sector, and that means making people actually have to be competitive, performant, and rewarded appropriately rather than effectively given handouts.

[League Circles]

Unions are tricky to integrate into modern economics because so many jobs now are sort of one-off unique positions. It's easy to organize into a union where a bunch of workers are doing identical tasks in front of each other but it's a lot more difficult in most Fields where no one really does the same work.

On the related issues of pensions they're just not a plausible idea going forward because of the enormous uncertainties regarding life expectancies.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

I'll just say the performance thing in schools is really controversial. School outcomes have so much that go into it, not the least of which is the socio-economics of the surrounding community.

You can measure performance in many ways, you don't need to make it based purely on numbers of the students but can take into account other factors. You can even measure only against teachers within the same district, much like companies don't measure their employees against those at other firms, they only measure them against their other employees.

The 401k verse pension thing I think is a bit of a false choice. Private corps went away from pensions because they weren't as good for the bottom line. I think we should normalize labor being treated better than capital in this country. Maybe that's not pensions, that's fine. But laborers should be getting more of the profit pie. A 401k doesn't do that. Your other reform ideas are basically just low key union-busting ideas. I get that the private sector has been basically decimated by union busting and now people think that's just normal and are ready to come for the public unions, but good union jobs provide for a strong middle class. We should be going back the other way and fighting for strong unions and a strong middle class back into the private sector rather than just letting it come for the public sector unions too.

A pension and a 401k are just different systems to pay into retirement pools. One is paid up front and has a hard cost directly related to the year it was achieved, one kicks the can down the road. You can make a lousy pension (10% of your average salary over your 30 year career) or a great pension (what we have now) just like you can a 401k (200% matching up to any amount vs 0% matching). The 401k is set up to attract good employees and encourage turnover which is good for companies, the pension is not.

In a way, I agree with your take on unions, but the problem is unions absolutely killed a lot of industries by making them non competitive. Right now the public unions are literally destroying the state of Illinois and bringing it to a point of insolvency, so while I agree we need to come up with ways to benefit labor which will help the lower/middle classes, unions don't seem to be a good answer to that because they don't stop at reasonable. Lack of unions also don't seem to be a good answer to that, and in fact we don't have a good answer to that which I know of.

Now, any benefit has to of course be weighed against profits, and whether its a private company or the politicians, future promises have to be actually funded, but I really hate any reform aimed at weakening the collective labor power. It will be real-wage decreases and more inequality that ultimately follows, while corporate profits prosper.

Well the direct payers of the massive free handout, life time employment, ridiculously better than I'll ever see retirement benefits is the citizens of Illinois, not corporations. Corporations are also fleeing our state because we're making it so unattractive for businesses which will make things worse.

Chicago is well on its way to becoming Detroit right now. Not sure how long it will take, but the value of it is becoming less and less and less, and as it becomes less, people don't pay the premium to live here, and as they stop paying that premium, we need more money, so we charge people a higher premium, which becomes even less attractive.

It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know how you stop it except first fixing costs around the public sector, and that means making people actually have to be competitive, performant, and rewarded appropriately rather than effectively given handouts.

What industries did unions kill off?