The most dysfunctional state in America? Soaring unemployment, sky-rocketing debt and punishing taxes send residents fleeing
Excerpt:
Move over California and New York, a new state is in contention for the ‘most dysfunctional’ in America.
Illinois is grappling with a string of issues which have triggered a rise in residents departing the state.
The state has struggled to add jobs and its public pension debt has ballooned to nearly $150 billion. Meanwhile, its population has declined, hurting tax income.
Conservative thinktanks have now grouped Illinois with other blue states like New York and California, which have also faced an exodus amid issues ranging from immigration to crime.
.....So on any metric, quantitatively on outcomes, Illinois’ economy is lagging.’
Census Bureau data reveals the population fell by around 32,826 people in the year to July 2023. The population of 12,549,689 was also more than a quarter of a million less than in April 2020.
Illinois’ pension debt also grew by $2.6 billion last year to reach $142.3 billion in unfunded liabilities, state data shows.
A September 2022 report by Equable said it has the second worst funded state pension in the country after Kentucky.
State accountants also project it will have a budget deficit of $891 million in the next fiscal year.
Governor J.B. Pritzker has defended his record in office and told a state of the state and budget address in February that his administration has ‘grown Illinois’ economy to over $1 trillion’.
Illinois’ unemployment rate of 4.8 percent is also the fifth-highest in the country.
.....Migrants take over $10 billion worth of income with them out of state when we lose people due to domestic migration, so it certainly has an impact on not only the state’s pocketbooks but local tax revenues as well.
‘But they’re not the root cause of the state’s budgetary stress, because the state also has another very large issue to contend with, which is unfunded pension liabilities that are eating into state and local government budgets and crowding out funding and taking up large sources of revenue.’
The situation in Illinois follows similar trends in New York and California, which have both lost hundreds of thousands of residents in recent years - with many of those relocating to low tax, red states like Florida and Texas.
US Census Bureau data published last October revealed California and New York combined lost nearly 1.4 million residents in 2022.
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Underfunded state pensions(for overpaid sloths), another time bomb
I wouldn’t call firefighters and police “overpaid sloths,” but I personally know a retired police officer who has not just double-dipped a public pension, he has TRIPLE-dipped it. That should NOT be allowed, IMHO.
The state has struggled to add jobs and its public pension debt has ballooned to nearly $150 billion***
This was all foreseen at least as early as the early Trump admin... of course nothing was done about it. The 'Rats are consumate experts at creating serious problems - they have zero experience at fixing them.
The Illinois 'Rats made a deal with govt employees: we will line your pockets with gold... just rake back a chunk to us from union dues. The great hero of the 'Rat Party, FDR, said that govt unions would never work out and should not be allowed. Was FDR the last intelligent 'Rat❓
President Milei expels Cuban-run Telesur Network from Argentina
Translated excerpt:
The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, removed the pro-Castro channel Telesur from the open television grid in that South American nation.
Diego Chaher, in charge of various channels and public content in Argentina, confirmed this in statements to the newspaper La Nación.
Telesur is a propaganda machine for Castroism and Chavez-Maduroism, and its intention is to counter the message of freedom and respect for human rights in the world.
“TeleSur was founded by the ‘Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information’ of Hugo Chavez to destabilize democracies in Latin America. It is funded by Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Russia. It is time for the rest of the region to do the same,” reads a Twitter thread by activist Agustin Antonetti.
“TeleSur is NOT a media outlet. There are NO journalists at TeleSur. TeleSur’s objective is NOT to inform. One must be very naive to believe that a dictatorship like Venezuela’s (where all non-state television channels are banned) seeks press freedom,” he added.
Add to this that in Javier Milei’s Argentina, there is a significant reduction in the budget of public media, which also results in salary reductions for staff.
“The National Government has a firm decision and conviction to take care of the budget expenditure that comes from the taxes paid by citizens. This savings policy will also be implemented in Public Television, therefore, there will be no news broadcasts on public holidays,” a statement issued by Argentine authorities said.
On social media platform X, several internet users reacted to the news. Cuban writer and poet Ariel Maceo Tellez pointed out that Telesur has had its headquarters in Havana since 2020.
“From there, they also help produce communist propaganda to keep half the world deceived,” he commented.