CHICAGO — Democrats will convene Monday in a state whose condition illustrates a political pathology named for a Democratic mayor. The Curley Effect explains the political rewards for those who inflict prolonged misgovernance.
By a similar dynamic, the Democratic Party’s strangling grip on Illinois has been tightened, to the benefit of other states, especially the five contiguous ones. Formerly the Land of Lincoln, now the Land of Blue State Governance Blues, Illinois is as follows:
Its population has declined for 10 consecutive years. It is one of only three states (Mississippi, West Virginia) to lose population between 2010 and 2020. And an additional 230,000 (more than twice Peoria’s population) since then. Since 2000, more than 1.5 million have fled, costing an estimated $3.6 billion in income tax revenue in 2022 alone, a year the net loss of 87,000 residents subtracted $9.8 billion in adjusted gross income. In the past six years, $47.5 billion AGI has left. A net loser of households in every age and income bracket, Illinois leads the nation in net losses of households making $200,000 or more.
Fewer Illinoisans are employed than when Democrat J.B. Pritzker became governor in 2019. The state’s 5 percent unemployment rate is the nation’s third-worst; its Black unemployment rate is second-worst. Since 2010, manufacturing jobs have increased an average of 21 percent in six nearby states; in Illinois, 1 percent. Last year, 75 percent of its cities shrank. Illinois, which had 24 congressional seats in 1970, has 17 today and probably will lose two after the 2030 Census.
Under billionaire Pritzker, who sends his children to private schools (his family foundation has given $8.3 million to the Massachusetts boarding school he attended), Illinois this year became the first state ever to retreat from school choice (18 have created or expanded choice programs since 2023), killing, to please teachers unions, a small tax-credit scholarship program that served mostly poor and minority pupils.
The indispensable Illinois Policy Institute, a think tank, documents that although Illinois spends almost $24,000 per pupil (up 97 percent since 2007), only 35 percent of pupils read at grade level (1.2 million do not) and only 27 percent are proficient in math (1.4 million are not). In Decatur, 7 percent can read at grade level; in Peoria, 15 percent. In 67 schools, no child recently tested proficient in math; in 37, none were proficient in reading. Yet officials celebrate the state’s high (87.6 percent) graduation rate. The online publication Wirepoints reports that school administrators (18 superintendents made more than $300,000 in 2022) have increased 70 percent since 1998 while enrollments have declined about 100,000. No wonder Illinois ranks 40th among the states in social mobility measured by the likelihood of earning more than the previous generation.
The state has more local government units — not counting school districts — than any state: 1,000 more than neighbors Indiana, Kentucky and Iowa combined. Last year, more than 140,000 government workers and retirees in Illinois received more than $100,000 in salaries or pensions.
Illinois, one of 17 states whose inflation-adjusted household income decreased in 2022, has the nation’s second-highest property taxes, ranks last nationally in home value appreciation since 2000, has the highest state and local taxes on U.S. median income households, the second-highest gas taxes and corporate income tax rate and recently enacted $1.1 billion in tax increases. Yet its unfunded state pensions liability has, according to the state, grown under Pritzker from $137 billion to $142 billion. However, according to Moody’s, state pension debt is nearly $300 billion, and state and local shortfalls reached $530 billion four years ago. Illinois, a self-declared “sanctuary state,” spent about 2.2 billion taxpayer dollars over two years supporting illegal immigrants.
Democrats will convene Monday in a state that in a recent year lost 28,477 net residents not to Sun Belt states with milder climates, but to its five contiguous states. Judging by the policies advocated for years by both members of the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket, both should feel comfortable in Illinois, where their progressivism is practiced.
