Posted on 02/16/2014 7:09:43 AM PST by Libloather
CHICAGO — This is now the city of big debt, where each of Chicago's 2.7 million residents — from infants in diapers to senior citizens on fixed incomes — is on the hook for about $20,000 in long-term pension promises and bond obligations.
Like the relentless snow clogging the city's streets, it just keeps piling up.
Chicago isn't bankrupt Detroit, junk-status Puerto Rico or New York at the brink of insolvency in 1975. Yet the city of gleaming skyscrapers along Lake Michigan's shore tripled its debt load from 2002 to 2012, as it ignored annual pension payments and borrowed for capital and operating expenses. A $590 million payment for retirement obligations is due next year, threatening cuts in everything from police to garbage collection, a tax increase, or both.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Congress borrows all the time. What's the big deal?
Did the Chicago Tribune just discover this? Do they know how this happened?
Anyway, welcome to the party, pals.
Big unions contribute 99%+ to liberal democrats in order to get them elected so that the unions get insane pensions/benefits as payback.
It is a great feedback loop which guarantees democrat long term rule in most of America’s big cities.
Did I mention that any city employee must join these unions and pay union dues as a CONDITION of employment?
And we wonder where it will end.
It does. The whole state is broke too.
Bttt
excellent article. thanks
And the sad reality for those infants in diapers, by the time they find out about their share of the debt, it will probably be twice as much.
It’s a pretty sweet little con game they got going. The city won’t raise taxes on the citizens because the citizens would throw them out of office. So, the city offers some bonds for sale. Some Slickyboy financial types rush in to buy the bonds with other people’s money. The slickyboys get paid and the politicians get paid and the city keeps throwing money around. Eventually, the city has to pay off the bonds, so they declare bankruptcy. The people who gave their money to the Slickyboy money managers then start crying to the politicians, who were in on the con from the start, and the politicians pay them off with tax money from people who live a thousand miles from any of the city’s services. The people perpetrating this hoax live the good life while the guy in Idaho wonders why the government needs so much of his hard-earned pay.
For this and other reasons, the productive decent people of Chicago should move outside the city limits of Chicago. Ditto for many other major cities, which are going to confront these problems in the future.
Move and dispose of all property you own in such cities, so you won’t be taxed to pay for all these mistakes.
Democrats have controlled big cities long enough to have destroyed most of them although many people don’t yet realize it. They have done the same thing at the State level in those states where they have long term control. They are now trying to do the same thing at the Federal level, often aided by Republicans who believe that spending someone else’s money is the path to perpetual political power.
This fantasy world will come crashing down, it simply cannot be sustained. Millions of people will pay the price when the dream comes to an end. The only ones who will have benefited from the fantasy life will be the politicians.
I don’t wonder where it will end.
Rahm E. cannot walk on water. Detroit and San Bernardino, to name two, already tried and couldn’t do it.
According to one of my lib sisters who lives in a Chicago suburb, most non-black/Hispanic residents of the Chicago suburbs are Republicans. She whines about being the only Democrat at parties. I just laugh. Even her husband is a Republican.
Why does the city of Chicago get away with what in most ways is identity theft?
For $20,000 you could drive yourself a brand new car.
The answer from the poly-libs is to tax everyone who can be considered to have earnings derived from ANY interaction with [insert name]! The current example of this is the pro athlete teams who are taxed on the portion of salary 'earned' in the locality. Once a tax has been established, it is easy to expand it to an ever larger group of 'tax payers', and that is what will be done.
Soon people will get tax notices from places they have never been but since the money is deemed 'earned' from there, pay you must. Why do you think we are seeing all the effort to track cars and people throughout the land? Yes, they say it is for [plausible reason] but when the data is just lying there ... TAX IT!
The saving grace is, you can move away.
Just don’t vote for the same insanity in the state you chose to inhabit, please!
The City of Chicago is also the entirety of Cook County.
That’s news to me. I’m sitting in Cook County at the moment, and the Chicago city limit (probably) is more than twenty miles away.
I’m not sure how I made that mistake, as I lived in Chicago for 15 years. Sorry about that, I’m completely wrong.
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