I recall a business owner who moved his business from Chicago to Austin. He was amazed at the warm ‘how can we help’ greeting in Austin compared to the bureaucratic hostility in Chicago. Somebody else said ´nothing changes without pain.’ I wonder when we will reach the tipping point.
Thad, I've heard your friend's story a hundred times with a hundred different names attached. Austin, Nashville, Tampa, Hammond. "Nothing changes without pain" is half right. Illinois has had plenty of pain! What it hasn't had is consequences for the people causing it. They've lost Citadel, Boeing, Caterpillar's HQ, and now the Bears, and no one has lost an election over it. The tipping point comes when those two things finally connect. I'm working on it!
"Chicago lost nearly 1-in-5 businesses between 2015 and 2024, translating to nearly 11,200 fewer businesses operating in the city. Of the city’s 98 neighborhoods, 80 lost 10% or more of their businesses. Mag Mile lost 41% of its stores."
Well, the reality is that democrats have nothing but a perfect lifetime record of turning every organization, village, town, city, county, state, and country they run into a pile of rancid stinking steaming brown stuff ... and that record is not accidental.
Here in Huntsville, AL, we treat opportunities as opportunities- for everyone. If a business is coming in (tax revenue!), they'll bring jobs (more tax revenue!). Huntsville works hard to ensure that there is enough housing for every income level, and they use a portion of the tax revenue to raise the quality of life for everyone- there are so many free and fun things to do here. The schools are top-notch. They also have a ton of services for those who have fallen on hard times, in whatever way, and work with those people to better themselves- for years, if need be. As a result, we have a rich culture with a diverse economy and just a bunch of pretty happy folks. I don't think it's magic- just everyone working together for a common vision.
I have a friend who used to set up servers for call centers. Years ago when he was setting up a call center in Chicago he said it was Chicago electrical code to have something like a 12 foot power cord on the servers and that no servers came from the factory with a 12 foot power cord, nor did you need a cord that long to install the servers into a rack. What the Chicago code did require was a union electrician to install the cord on a guaranteed minimum two hour call out for essentially a 10 minute job my friend said he could do himself....and you wonder why people don't want to do business in Chicago.
All of what you say is probably true of Illinois. But your article is ostensibly about the McCaskey family building a new stadium and choosing the Hammond site because the Illinois legislature wouldn’t help fund the site the McCaskey’s own in Arlington Hts. It seems that in this situation, it is not the state doing the extracting but the McCaskeys. Study after study has shown that public financing of sports stadiums is a losing proposition for taxpayers. Perhaps the more appropriate question here is why the Indiana legislature is willing to use its taxpayers money to fund a stadium that will primarily be used by residents of Illinois. As a renowned advocate of entrepreneurship, I would expect you would be applauding Illinois, chastising Indiana and urging the McCaskeys to arrange private financing for their stadium.
I recall a business owner who moved his business from Chicago to Austin. He was amazed at the warm ‘how can we help’ greeting in Austin compared to the bureaucratic hostility in Chicago. Somebody else said ´nothing changes without pain.’ I wonder when we will reach the tipping point.
Thad, I've heard your friend's story a hundred times with a hundred different names attached. Austin, Nashville, Tampa, Hammond. "Nothing changes without pain" is half right. Illinois has had plenty of pain! What it hasn't had is consequences for the people causing it. They've lost Citadel, Boeing, Caterpillar's HQ, and now the Bears, and no one has lost an election over it. The tipping point comes when those two things finally connect. I'm working on it!
According to Illinois Policy:
"Chicago lost nearly 1-in-5 businesses between 2015 and 2024, translating to nearly 11,200 fewer businesses operating in the city. Of the city’s 98 neighborhoods, 80 lost 10% or more of their businesses. Mag Mile lost 41% of its stores."
Well, the reality is that democrats have nothing but a perfect lifetime record of turning every organization, village, town, city, county, state, and country they run into a pile of rancid stinking steaming brown stuff ... and that record is not accidental.
Here in Huntsville, AL, we treat opportunities as opportunities- for everyone. If a business is coming in (tax revenue!), they'll bring jobs (more tax revenue!). Huntsville works hard to ensure that there is enough housing for every income level, and they use a portion of the tax revenue to raise the quality of life for everyone- there are so many free and fun things to do here. The schools are top-notch. They also have a ton of services for those who have fallen on hard times, in whatever way, and work with those people to better themselves- for years, if need be. As a result, we have a rich culture with a diverse economy and just a bunch of pretty happy folks. I don't think it's magic- just everyone working together for a common vision.
I have a friend who used to set up servers for call centers. Years ago when he was setting up a call center in Chicago he said it was Chicago electrical code to have something like a 12 foot power cord on the servers and that no servers came from the factory with a 12 foot power cord, nor did you need a cord that long to install the servers into a rack. What the Chicago code did require was a union electrician to install the cord on a guaranteed minimum two hour call out for essentially a 10 minute job my friend said he could do himself....and you wonder why people don't want to do business in Chicago.
All of what you say is probably true of Illinois. But your article is ostensibly about the McCaskey family building a new stadium and choosing the Hammond site because the Illinois legislature wouldn’t help fund the site the McCaskey’s own in Arlington Hts. It seems that in this situation, it is not the state doing the extracting but the McCaskeys. Study after study has shown that public financing of sports stadiums is a losing proposition for taxpayers. Perhaps the more appropriate question here is why the Indiana legislature is willing to use its taxpayers money to fund a stadium that will primarily be used by residents of Illinois. As a renowned advocate of entrepreneurship, I would expect you would be applauding Illinois, chastising Indiana and urging the McCaskeys to arrange private financing for their stadium.