Seems fair. The good people voted for the representatives that continued to increase public employee pay, without additional funding for required pensions. Now pay up.
Instead of back-stabbing the property owners all across the state, who don't have a dog in this hunt, they should require the current public employees with pensions to pay an additional 50 percent of their paychecks to fund this bloated public-sector pension debt. Let them get taken to the cleaners and see how they like it.
They should also fire all of the liberals running this show and start a renegotiating process with the pensioners. Tell them they'll only get 10 cents on the dollar and let them cry about it.
If not, the unintended consequence of this onerous, unilateral wallet-picking scheme by the state will cause a huge outflow of residents. Property values will dive big time.
And who you going to sell to? More idiots moving in who don't understand economics?
And if you think for a moment that this proposed 1% tax will magically disappear in 30 years, dream on.
Just as bad as Seattle's jobs tax to pay for the homeless.
Liberals will only figure it out when they are hit hard in the pocketbook.
And even then, they will blame Trump.
Will the last self sufficient,self respecting resident of Illinois headed to Florida or Arizona please turn out the lights?
I left Illinois in 2013. Taxes on my house downstate were 5%. Taxes on my house in Chicagoland were 8%.
As taxes go up ... and as working people continue to flee ... Illinois house values will continue to stagnate at the bottom. Supply exceeds demand. That simple.
So the tax RATE will have to go up even higher, or the assessments will have to be very phony, in order to collect more money. But house values will go down in direct proportion to taxes going up.
Some problems are unsolvable, which is why bankruptcy exists.
existing pension obligations must be honored, paid
but.. the state can stop amassing further pension obligations pretty soon, at least as fast as it renegotiates any public employee union contracts calling for them
the growth in pension debt can be stemmed!
all the fine citizens of Illinois need to do is elect some HONEST, NOT CROOKED and sensible politicians (and please, yes,, I do know that’s an oxymoronic phrase, ha!) But still .... the citizens of Illinois CAN fix this problem if they choose
I’m sure happy to live in the state of Tennessee.
Sure, our government is corrupt.
They’re just not as greedy.
“Illinois homeowners should pay about 40 percent more for the next three decades to wipe out the state’s crippling pension debt”
Here’s a better idea: cut the pensions of the fascist government retirees by half. No need to raise taxes. The next year, cut the pensions in half again. Year three, do the cut again.
As people start leaving, where will they get their property tax? From abandoned houses?
Economists are sometimes good at figuring out, after the fact, that something went wrong in the economy and we now have a recession, or inflation, or shortages of toilet paper as a result.
They are notoriously unable to predict with any degree of accuracy or timing what effect a general tax increase will have. Some will say it helps put more money in circulation; others will say that's bunk: it's not the government's money to begin with, so you have to look at the effects on those paying the tax, too.
What could happen over time, if Illinois were to follow through with this 30-year penalty for owning property in the state is a proportionate drop in real estate prices as the state's population ages and retirees move to Florida and Texas and other places where they can live in relative luxury cheaply.
Existing home prices will likely be impacted by an across-the-board fixed percentage property tax increase. The delicate balance of sellers and buyers would have to tip. More sellers than buyers means lower selling prices. A ten percent drop in home prices would mean a commensurate drop in property taxes collected, if assessments are made honestly. (In Illinois? Is that even possible?)
There are lots of economists who doubt the Laffer Curve because it goes against their political leanings. They dismiss it, call it "trickle-down" and refuse to concede that the Reagan tax cuts generated billions in additional tax revenue than expected simply by lowering federal income tax rates. (Of course, the budget deficit increased during those years also, due to the Democrats going on a spending spree while they were still in control of Congress.)
Should Illinois implement the 1% tax proposal, we could see proof that the Laffer Curve is a valid model, even at the state level.
Too bad for the public employees. Tough luck.
Reminds me of why I consider most ‘economists’ to be TOTAL IDIOTS.
In this example, the people who have the means, simply move out of state...thereby dumping an even much larger burden on ‘the poor’. Death-cycle. Too bad these ‘economists’ have never heard of ‘Detroit’.
Too - funny....pay more for 3 decades....at which time they are told the pensions came into some extra cash and went way up because the workers deserved it so now it will take another 5 decades to fund it properly....
There is no known way of fixing stupid
Pass something like this and the result will be more generous COLAs for government retirees. Pretty soon they’ll need another 1% tax increase. Just how democrap politicians think...
No = 97%