Yesterday’s column discussed Caterpillar’s decision to move its headquarters from high-tax Illinois to low-tax Texas.
Today, we have more bad news for the Prairie State.
A major investment fund, Citadel, also has decided to leave Illinois.
Is the company moving to a different high-tax state, perhaps California or New York? Maybe Connecticut or New Jersey?
Nope. Citadel is going to Florida, a state famous for having no income tax.
The Wall Street Journal opined this morning about Citadel’s move.
The first step to recovery is supposed to be admitting you have a problem. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker still won’t, even after billionaire Ken Griffin on Thursday said he’s moving his Citadel hedge fund and securities trading firm to Miami from Chicago. …Meantime, Democrats in Springfield continue to threaten businesses and citizens with higher taxes… It’s no wonder so many companies and people are leaving, and mostly to low-tax states. …In 2020, $2.4 billion in net adjusted gross income moved to Florida from Illinois, about $298,000 per tax filer. …Mr. Griffin has spent tens of millions of his personal fortune trying to rescue Illinois from bad progressive governance. Maybe he figures it’s time to cut his losses.
Other (former) Illinois residents cut their losses last decade.
Scott Shackford of Reason shared grim data at the end of 2020 about the ongoing exodus from Illinois.
For the seventh year in a row, census figures show residents moving out of Illinois in significant numbers. …Perhaps demanding that your excessively taxed residents give the government even more money is not the best way to keep those residents in your state… Over the course of the last decade, Illinois lost more than a quarter-million people…not even California…has seen Illinois’ population loss. …Government leaders have responded not with better fiscal management (the state’s powerful unions blocked pension reforms), but with more taxes and fees, even as residents leave.
The bottom line is that Illinois is currently losing people and businesses.
Just as it lost people and businesses last decade.
And you can see from this map that taxpayers also were fleeing the state earlier this century.
I’m guessing the state’s hypocritical governor probably thinks this is a good thing because the people who left probably didn’t vote for tax-and-spend politicians.
But that’s a very short-sighted viewpoint.
After all, parasites need a healthy host. If you’re a flea or a tick, it’s bad news if you’re on a dog that dies.
As Michael Barone noted many years ago, that’s a lesson that Illinois politicians haven’t learned.
