Illinois, the nation's self-proclaimed most progressive state, is first in tax burden and last in equity and has residents of all demographics leaving in record numbers
Since 2000, over 266,000 African Americans have left Chicago. An overwhelming majority of blacks exiting Chicago are middle-class families with children. Within the black exodus from Chicago, children are overrepresented in the black population's decline. In comparison to black adults over the same time period, 2000-2020, the number of black children 17 and younger have fallen by nearly 50 percent. How can this startling decline occur in this most progressive of states, whose leaders have portrayed Illinois as a progressive model of success for the nation?
Despite the state and city government’s years-long efforts at promoting racial equality of outcomes — “equity” — the extraordinarily uneven consequences of government policies under Democratic state and local leadership prove these promises to be mere rhetorical flourish. State and local policies, like those of Illinois, directly undermine the four most important elements of improving outcomes for black residents: Public safety, quality public education, taxation, and public services.
Illinois ranks first in tax burden and last in equity
Lamentably, Illinois ranks at or near the bottom among states in terms of racial equity. A 2023 study by WalletHub placed the state dead last in disparity between blacks and whites according to eight measures of prosperity: Poverty rate, homelessness rate, share of unsheltered homeless, labor-force participation rate, homeownership rate, share of executive positions, median annual household income, and unemployment rate.
More troubling for Illinois, the Archbridge Foundation Index ranked the Prairie State the tenth-worst state for social mobility, or a person’s ability to climb the income ladder and out-earn the previous generation. A Wirepoints' examination of 2023 U.S. Census Data reported that median black household incomes in Illinois are only 54 percent of white incomes — the 3rd-worst ratio in the nation, behind only Louisiana (52 percent) and Wisconsin (50 percent).
How can Illinois rank last, or near the bottom, in racial equality among states, despite being one of the highest-taxed states in the nation? After all, WalletHub also found that Illinois takes the top-taxing position in the country. Kiplinger’s annual state tax analysis, likewise, shows that Illinois taxes middle-class families more than any state except New Jersey and Connecticut. Like Chicago, Illinois’ inequities do not stem from a lack of resources.
The crime pandemic is worsening with the black community suffering the most
Much of the blame for the deep inequities separating whites and blacks should fall on the state and city governments’ policy and prioritizing of special interests. At the very heart of the inequities is public safety. Though government’s primary responsibility, the black community disproportionately suffers from an insufficient number of police officers to respond to 911 calls, an inadequately staffed detective bureau to close cases, protect witnesses and victims, and severe restraints on proactive policing.
Many of the inequities faced by blacks in Chicago were compounded under former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. A progressive, during her two terms, Foxx often declined to charge violent criminals. In the instances in which violent offenders did face justice, Foxx tended favor releasing them pre-trial, which left violent criminals free to terrorize law-abiding blacks. A betrayal of the righteous, Foxx's favoritism for criminals returned dangerous, repeat offenders to communities where victims and witnesses were left unprotected. Foxx’s policies had devastating effects on the black community, with the most severe effects among black women of all age groups across Chicago.
The vast majority of violent crime occurs within black communities. In Chicago, blacks comprise 32 percent of the city’s population but nearly 80 percent of the murder and attempted murder victims are black. Additionally, 90 percent of the assailants are black, and over 80 percent of the high-priority 911 calls, including shootings, assaults, robberies, burglaries, carjacking, come from predominantly black communities.
Police leaders dedicate personnel and assets to communities with the greatest need, to high-crime areas. This means there will invariably be more arrests and dangerous, potentially lethal encounters between police and black alleged perpetrators.
A CBS News Chicago analysis of Chicago police crime data found that black women accounted for 30 percent of all crime victims in 2022; nearly one in three black women were targeted by crime in Chicago last year. Black women and girls under 18 are hardest hit, with fourteen black girls attacked and injured for every one white girl.
Instead of incapacitating the most violent elements of Chicago society through incarceration, a growing group of special interests have transformed criminal justice reform into a lucrative enterprise. A network comprised of lawyers, advocates, university researchers, consultants, and consent-decree monitors, each have a growing financial interest in portraying criminals as sympathetic figures and depicting police as the neighborhood bully.
In Illinois, this is a network from which many of its key figures have greatly profited; and for some, it has become a lucrative livelihood. As this network has grown, it spurred the development of law firms specializing in representing those accused of violent crimes and suing police for alleged civil rights violations. An expensive endeavor, to represent Chicago, the city often resorts to hiring outside law firms to defend police officers, and after lengthy and costly hearings, city leaders often capitulate by approving enormous taxpayer-funded settlements. Hundreds of millions of taxpayers are handed over to attorneys involved in these cases.
Illinois' public education system is among the best funded and among the poorest performing in the nation
Despite these dismal achievement scores, instead of allowing parents to opt-out of the failing zoned public school system, members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by the mayor — himself a former CTU organizer — passed a resolution to transition Chicago Public Schools away from “privatization and admissions/enrollment policies.” This act is intended to complete an ongoing effort by the CTU to force the district to eliminate public charter schools that not governed by the CTU contract, and whose superior performance embarrasses neighborhood schools.
Enveloped in this battle are Chicago’s public-school children and their parents — overwhelmingly black and Hispanic — who are forced to witness crippling limitations placed on public school alternatives to often failing neighborhood schools by CTU leadership obsessed with eliminating any competition to the neighborhood schools monopoly.
The CORE caucus’ steely determination to shutter its public-school rivals comes amid the fact of the 54,000 Chicago children are enrolled in charter schools, 98 percent are black and Hispanic, and 86 percent of whom are from low-income households. Of the over 12,000 students enrolled in magnet schools, over 70 percent are black and Hispanic, and over half are low income.
In addition to laboring to purge charter schools, the CTU exhaustively lobbied the Illinois General Assembly (IGA) to make Illinois the “only state in the nation” to eliminate the tiny state-supported private school choice program, Invest in Kids. Though the program cost the state less than 1 percent of annual expenditures on public K-12 education, in a bow to the CTU, Democrats in the IGA allowed the program to sunset. While Illinois disposed of Invest in Kids, 18 other states created or expanded private school choice in 2024, bringing the number of states offering such programs to 33, including 10 states offering universal school choice.
The goal of public spending in Illinois is to expand government, not invest in communities
Finally, Illinois and Chicago’s public expenditures fail to deliver effective public services for the exorbitant taxation they levy, leaving communities that depend on those services even further behind. As a result of this toxic combination of nation-leading taxes and wasteful spending, middle-class families — particularly black households — are fleeing both the state and Chicago to other states.
Crushing state and city tax burdens harm families and businesses alike. Kiplinger’s most recent financial report ranks Illinois as the least tax-friendly state for middle-class families. Kiplinger’s annual state tax analysis also found that Illinois has the second-highest property taxes, eighth-highest combined sales tax, and above-average income taxes.
Over and above Kiplinger’s revelations on Illinois’ tax burden, Wirepoints reports that, when measured as a percentage of home values, Illinois’ property taxes are the highest in the country. As a share of household incomes, property taxes are up more than 60 percent compared with three decades ago. In worse news, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that businesses in Chicago are burdened with the highest commercial property taxes among large U.S. cities.
A cold-eyed assessment of these conclusions should lead sober observers to deduce the overarching goal of state and city public spending is merely to expand government by increasing the public payrolls. While Illinois has been is near the bottom in state job growth over the last decade, job growth in Chicago since COVID has almost entirely existed in largely in expanding the size and scope of government. For example: Between February 2023-24, Illinois’ state and local governments added 28,000 new jobs, while the private sector lost 11,700.
Meanwhile, Illinois Sanctuary State and Chicago’s Sanctuary City policies have diverted critical tax dollars to illegal immigrants, who are being treated as the new aggrieved minority at the expense current residents. To date, Chicago has committed $450 million while Wirepoints places Chicago school expenditures between $210-400 million. Overall, both state and city spending to date is $2 billion, including healthcare There is no end in sight as there is no strategy to limit the number of new migrants or cut benefits.
The continued public-sector growth is on an unsustainable upward trajectory. With over $530 billion in state and local government retirement obligations, state employee pension and health care now consume an unsettling 20 percent of state spending. Wirepoints reports that Illinois has 132,188 working and retired government employees drawing over $100,000 a year in pension payments, up from 94,000 just six years ago. Likewise, Chicago’s municipal employee pensions and other debt service consumes a staggering 80 percent of city property tax revenues.
Compounding the government's impact of state and local tax and debt burdens, businesses are enduring ever-expanding mandates, regardless of their ability to pay. Examples of this hostility with business include recent large increases in the minimum wage, the elimination of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, and a doubling of the mandated family paid days for private employees.
With a flailing economy and little reason to choose Chicago over business-friendly states in the southern half of the country, growing government for its own sake is producing catastrophic results, especially for Illinois’ black families. The state’s black unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in the first quarter of 2023, the nation’s second-highest according to the Economic Policy Institute. In sharp contrast, every one of Illinois’ neighboring states enjoy far lower black unemployment rates.
While investment in Chicago continues, a 2022 study commissioned by the Urban Institute, found that Chicago ranked 40th out of the 100th largest U.S. cities, with annual investment totaling $20,450 per household between 2010 and 2020. However, census tracts with 80 percent or more black population generated only $7,801 in annual investment. In comparable tracts, where blacks comprise less than 20 percent of the population, investment totaled $25,889. The reason for the gap isn’t racism; rather, it is public insecurity, poor-quality schools, and eroding economic opportunity.
This situation is placing all Illinois residents in an increasingly perilous situation. As a result, residents of all demographic groups are fleeing the state. According to the most recent census data, Illinois’ overall population continued to decline, with losses totaling a quarter-million since 2020. The Chicago area lost population for third straight year, ranking behind only New York City and Los Angeles among metropolitan areas. Illinois is also hemorrhaging businesses, ranking behind only California and New York in the total number of businesses relocating out of state.
Unfortunately, the prospects for a fundamental change are slim given the political landscape and the state owning the worst gerrymandered legislative map of any state in the union. A laughable map, it virtually guarantees permanent, veto proof Democratic majorities in the IGA. How else could Trump win 45 percent of Illinois vote, yet not a single State House or Senate seat or Congressional seat was gained by Republicans?
With no federal rescue of any sort on the horizon and a handicapped Republican opposition, Democratic leaders would do well to take a moment to question the results of the states so called progressive equity agenda.
