Thread: Liberal cities across America collapsing into Third World status, including Seattle

Everybody in the nation is now on the hook for Illinois politicians' irresponsible decisions."

NO, NO I AM NOT

Illinois Is the Canary In The Pension Coal Mine



"As the assets shrink, the pension funds go into a financial death spiral. We might end up with some kind of Puerto Rico–style pseudo-bankruptcy or federal bailout. Everybody in the nation is now on the hook for Illinois politicians' irresponsible decisions."

Sun, 08/11/2019 - 14:30
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Reason.com's Mike Riggs talks with Illinois Policy Institute's Adam Schuster about how to fix the state's pension debt crisis...


Illinois is running out of time to fix its public sector pension problem. A new report from Moody's Investors Service identified the Prairie State as one of the two most likely to suffer during an economic downturn. Illinois towns and cities are already paring back government services to pay for generous benefits packages for retirees, and Chicago's pension debt alone is larger than that of 41 states. That arrangement can't last forever.

"The worst-case scenario is there's another national recession, which would cause our pension funds to lose a bunch of their assets again," says Adam Schuster of the Illinois Policy Institute.
"As the assets shrink, the pension funds go into a financial death spiral. We might end up with some kind of Puerto Rico–style pseudo-bankruptcy or federal bailout. Everybody in the nation is now on the hook for Illinois politicians' irresponsible decisions."

The best-case scenario would involve repealing an automatic 3 percent raise that pensioners receive each year of their retirement and requiring workers to pay more into their own plans. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker would prefer to scrap Illinois' flat income tax and replace it with a progressive tax scheme, which could cause even more people to flee the state. In May, Schuster spoke to Reason's Mike Riggs about the pension conundrum.
Q: If somebody had been paying attention 30 years ago, could they have anticipated this pension problem?
A: Thirty years ago would be just about enough time to stop some of the mistakes. We changed the state constitution in 1970 to add a pension protection provision, which essentially says that as of the day of hire, an employee's benefit formula cannot be changed in any way. So it doesn't only protect benefits that somebody has already earned. It protects the future growth rate of those benefits for life and gives the state legislature no flexibility to change them.
Q: What happened next?

A: In 1990, Illinois implemented a guaranteed 3 percent compounding cost of living adjustment. So a person's pension goes up by 3 percent every year regardless of how much inflation there is in the economy. It basically doubles the size of somebody's pension over the course of 25 years.
We also had a series of governors, both Republican and Democratic, who habitually shorted the system by putting in less than the required contribution. The reason they did that is that the required contributions were unaffordable and never would have been affordable because we overpromised the benefits.
Q: Do Illinois taxpayers know what's going on?
A: I think there is pretty widespread knowledge about the problem, but there's also a defeatist apathy. We've had five straight years of population loss. We're losing our prime working-age adults, and poll results say that the No. 1 reason they're leaving is that the taxes are too high here. And the No. 2 reason they're leaving is job opportunities are better elsewhere, which is related to No. 1.
Q: What do public sector union leaders say about the pension crisis? How about union members?
A: I appreciate that you make that distinction, because I've found there is a huge disparity in how they react to this kind of thing. Union leaders, who are involved in politics and lobbying, are against having this conversation at all. But when I talk to regular rank-and-file union members, they actually think the plan we put forward is a very fair and very reasonable compromise.
Q: What is the short version of your plan?
A: It would amend our constitution so that instead of protecting the future growth rate, it would only protect the pension benefit that somebody has earned to date. So if you retired today, your annuity would be protected, but it would give the legislature flexibility to change retirement ages for younger workers and to change that 3 percent cost of living adjustment, for example.
Q: What happens if Illinois does nothing?
A: I don't know if you followed at all the story of Harvey, Illinois, but it's a South Chicago suburb, and they have one of the highest effective property tax rates in the nation. Even still, their police and fire pensions are so underfunded that in order to make their pension payment, they had to lay off dozens of current police officers and firefighters.
Q: That's what people pay taxes for: government services!
A: Harvey was the canary in the coal mine. Down in Peoria, they've had to lay off municipal workers, people who plow the streets. In Rockford, they're being told they need to sell their city water system. Municipalities around the state are laying off public safety workers today to pay for yesterday's pensions.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...sion-coal-mine

NO FEDERAL BAILOUT!

EVERY DEMOCRAT RUN CITY NEEDS A BAILOUT!

Illinois' Shrinking Tax Base: Residents Are Leaving & Taking Their Incomes With Them




There’s perhaps no indicator more damning of a state’s failure to govern than the flight of its residents to other states...People of every stripe are leaving Illinois. Old and young, rich and poor.

Mon, 08/12/2019 - 18:45
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Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via WirePoints.org,
There’s perhaps no indicator more damning of a state’s failure to govern than the flight of its residents to other states.
People of every stripe are leaving Illinois. Old and young, rich and poor. They are going to warm states and cold states, big states and small states. Overall, Illinois netted losses of residents to 43 other states in 2016.
That has major implications for the state and the Illinoisans who remain. A shrinking population means a future with less economic growth, less investment, falling real estate values and an eroded tax base. And as people leave, fewer residents will be left to pay down the state’s growing debts, meaning the already massive burden will only gets worse.ncle Sam Wants You to Pay Your Crypto Taxes

Illinois has netted a loss of 1.5 million people to other states since 2000, based on U.S. Census data. And as international immigration and births in Illinois have declined in recent years, they’re failing to make up for Illinois net outmigration. As a result, the state’s population has shrunk five years in a row. Wirepoints analysed the results of the census data in our report: Illinois’ Demographic Collapse.
The following multi-part series will reveal just who is leaving, where they are going and what incomes they’re taking with them.
Wirepoints’ analysis uses national state-by-state migration data compiled by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS reviews tax returns annually to track when and where people move. It also aggregates the ages, income brackets and adjusted gross incomes of filers.
In this first piece, we’ll cover Illinois’ net loss of tax filers and their incomes since 2000.

* * *
Losing people and their incomes

Illinois is a national outlier when it comes to losing residents and their taxable income to other states.
In 2016, IRS data shows Illinois gained nearly 165,000 people from other states and they brought with them a combined Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of about $6.3 billion. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 Illinoisans left the state and they took more than $11 billion with them.
That means Illinois suffered a net loss of about 86,000 residents and a loss of $4.8 billion in taxable income – the equivalent of more than $100 million in state income tax revenues.


And that doesn’t include the additional loss in sales, property and other taxes those residents no longer pay.
Illinois has lost tax filers and taxable income, on net, every year since 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, the state averaged net losses of about $1.8 billion in taxable income each year. Since then, the state’s losses have accelerated by about $500 million a year, growing to $4.8 billion by 2016.
The problem isn’t just that more people are leaving than coming into Illinois. It’s also that those who leave, on average, earn more than those moving in. That too is draining the state’s tax base.
In 2016, the average taxable income of people leaving Illinois was in excess of $81,000. The taxable income of those coming from other states was just over $67,000.


So not only did Illinois lose a net 86,000 people and their AGI, but it also lost an average of $14,000 in AGI for every person that moved into Illinois in 2016.
Illinois the outlier

How did Illinois rank nationally for loss of AGI? We’ll take that up in our next piece, but for now we’ll share how Illinois stacks up on a per capita basis.
Take Illinois’ $4.8 billion AGI loss divided by the state’s 12.8 million people and Illinois lost $371 in income per person in 2016. Only 5 states lost more AGI per capita, including Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
In contrast, states that are winning people saw their tax base grow. Florida gained more than $800 in AGI per capita in 2016. Idaho and South Carolina, more than $400. Even neighboring cold-state Michigan gained $114 in AGI per capita.


Illinois out-migration situation is dismal. And the problem becomes even more stark when you look at the state’s record nationally over time. That’s the subject of Part 2 of this series.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...r-incomes-them

Where did the money go? that was an 8 year crime spree



freebeacon.com

Baltimore Received $1.8 Billion from Obama’s Stimulus Law
City burned despite ‘massive investment’ implemented by president Obama

"Human Tragedy" On The "Diseased Streets" Of San Francisco: "Worse Than Slums In Brazil & India"




“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,”







lllllllllllllllll

Just heard on CSPAN that Baltimore has OVER 30,000 Federal and State employees on the books

Costing taxpayers $2 BILLION a year!!!

She Means It



Joe Walsh

Yikes!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v41Avase1og

#Tucker #FoxNews

Tucker: The Democratic Party wants to run the US

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Progressive-controlled cities are on the urban decline. #Tucker #FoxNews

Trump to move homeless to "Government Facilities" at taxpayer expense

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