Chicago is spending itself into a hole and losing its population thanks to the failures of Democrats such as Mayor Brandon Johnson. Now the city is trying to scrounge up revenue any way it can.
Among the proposals for new revenue sources is turning Chicago’s business district, full of empty stores that closed for good due to pandemic lockdowns and crime, into a knockoff version of New York’s Times Square, full of video board advertisements.
“As beautiful as the riverwalk is, can you imagine what maybe some digital on the river would look like,” said the alderman, hand-picked by Johnson, leading the subcommittee.
City councilmembers are also looking at expanding revenues by turning part of Meigs Park, a former airport that is now a park, into a heliport and authorizing “video gaming” in Chicago bars. And it wouldn’t be a terribly run Democratic city without considering a wealth tax, plucked right from the $12 billion progressive tax plan proposal that Johnson tried to distance himself from last year.
Chicago lost 81,000 residents from 2020 to 2022 as people moved out looking for cleaner, less dangerous, less expensive places to live. Of the more than 104,000 people Illinois lost in 2022, 32% fled from Chicago. New York was the only city to lose more people than Chicago did in 2022. As a result, both Chicago and Illinois have had to wrestle with recouping hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues.
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Combine that with Chicago declaring itself a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, and the Windy City has been staring down a budget shortfall of $538 million, a problem that is still growing worse as more and more illegal immigrants arrive there. Now, Chicago is stuck floating the ideas of a wealth tax that will drive away millions more in tax revenue and of filling parts of the city with advertising video boards.
Chicago’s self-inflicted failures, from its already-high taxes and cost of living to its inability, or, more accurately, unwillingness, to get a handle on crime to encouraging illegal immigration, have put it in the budget hole it sees now. Chicago’s “solutions” are either unnecessary, self-destructive, or both, so long as those other problems go unaddressed.