TRUMP WILL LOSE, AND PROBABLY LOSE BIG, ON TUESDAY

 

10/27/20

 

Just as yours truly has thought since at least the Spring (PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED, 4/22/20), President Trump will turn out to be a one-term president.   How did I reach the conclusion?   By a lot of tedious work is the short answer, but the long answer is a bit more involved and risks descending into tedium, but bear with me; I’ll do my best to keep it interesting.

 

First, let’s talk about what doesn’t matter…the overall vote total.   This will not be an election in which the electoral college (There is much for which to thank God…living in America is right up near the top, but not too far down the list is the electoral college, but I digress.) delivers the election to one candidate while the popular vote comes out in favor of the other candidate.   Former Vice-President Joe Biden should win big in the general election, nearly surely by more than he will win in the electoral college.   Some of my more enthusiastic liberal friends are talking about a 60/40 general election victory for Mr. Biden.   They should know better.  Such blowouts are extremely rare.  The last presidential candidate to win with more than 60% of the vote was Richard Nixon in 1972.   Not even Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 pummeling of Walter Mondale, achieved 60% of the vote.  That having been written, presidential votes that resemble the 1986 Super Bowl in their lopsidedness have occurred four times in the last century:

 

Nixon in 1972

LBJ in 1964

FDR in 1936 (and only in 1936), and

Harding in 1920.

 

Looking at that list, the percentages might argue that an aspiring president might not want to win with such a humongous margin, but, again, I digress.    So, while there is a chance of a Nixonesque blowout in 2020, I would take, say, the Iowa Hawkeyes to win the Big 10 this year before I’d take Biden give 20, especially since the race has been tightening over the last week or so.   55/45 remains a possibility, however, though perhaps a fading one.

 

Now let’s get onto the meat of the matter, the electoral vote.   In reaching my conclusion that Joe Biden has at least 275 electoral votes, five more than needed, I was perhaps too generous to Mr. Trump, giving him

 

Arizona,

Florida,

Georgia,

Ohio, and

Texas.

 

A strong argument can be made that Biden could win Arizona, Florida, and Ohio; in my opinion, not strong enough, but an argument nonetheless.   That serious people are even talking about Mr. Trump’s possibly losing Georgia and Texas tells you about all you need to know about this election.   If either state is not decided within an hour of the polls’ closing, Mr. Trump, and the whole Republican Party, is in for a long, long night and months or years of reflection on what not to do next time.

 

I did give Mr. Biden

 

Michigan,

Pennsylvania, and

Minnesota.

 

I have as the only undecided states

North Carolina and

Iowa.

 

While I gave Florida to Mr. Trump, an easy case can be made for a Biden victory in the Sunshine State.   But Mr. Biden does not need to win Florida to win the election; Mr. Trump MUST win Florida to win this election.

 

But what if Mr. Trump wins Pennsylvania, a not unrealistic possibility?   That puts him within eight electoral votes of the prize and necessitates his winning North Carolina; Iowa, with its six electoral votes, won’t be enough.   Winning both Pennsylvania and North Carolina is a possibility for Mr. Trump, and its probability, while small, is not as tiny as that of the proverbial insight straight.

 

How about a Trump victory in Michigan, a longer shot than Pennsylvania, but not at all outside the realm of possibilities?  That puts him within twelve of the prize and again necessitates a win in North Carolina.  

 

If Mr. Trump wins both Pennsylvania and Michigan, he looks more like a winner.   But to become the winner, he must hold onto

 

Arizona,

Florida,

Georgia,

Ohio, and

Texas,

 

which I have given to Mr. Trump.

 

So, playing these map game, it all boils down to Mr. Trump’s winning two of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina while holding onto four states that he could very well lose.  That’s a tall order for even the formidable Mr. Trump.   Respectable polls give Mr. Biden a decent chance of winning all three of that combination, while I give two to Mr. Biden while keeping North Carolina as one of my two “undecideds.”   And if the President loses Florida or Texas, it’s all over.   The latter will not happen, but the former is a possibility; most respectable polls give Mr. Biden a “within the margin of error” lead in Florida.   That these polls lack the insight of yours truly does not mean that they do not have a few keen insights.

 

 

Getting away from the jigsaw puzzle of the electoral map, what could happen in the next week to change things?

 

First, I don’t know the ramifications of what looks to be an historic turnout.   And when I say “I don’t know” in this case, as in all cases, I mean “I don’t know.”  I’m not using “I don’t know” as a passive/aggressive, cutesy-pie way of disingenuously saying “I think what you’ve just said is moronic,” as has become the custom over the last ten years or so.   Are all these people waiting in line to vote or requesting absentee ballots out to support the President or to send him into an early retirement so decisive that he will have no choice but to leave quietly, or at least quietly by Trumpian standards?  I don’t know and neither do the learned pundits who spew pap and pabulum on the propaganda arms of the two parties that call themselves networks.

 

Second, and possibly related to the first, these Trump rallies are amazing.  I’ve never seen anybody, depending on one’s perspective, rile up a crowd or generate enthusiasm like President Trump at one of his rallies.  Huey Long was long gone by the time I put on this mortal coil, but I have to imagine that even the Kingfish himself couldn’t get a crowd going like Mr. Trump.  By contrast, Mr. Biden’s public appearances are real snoozers with crowds that look like they were somehow dragooned or bribed into attending and counting the seconds until they can leave.  Mr. Biden and his handlers contend that he is merely looking out for the populace’s health by keeping his rallies small, and his accomplices in the media parrot this contention, but one strongly suspects that it didn’t take much effort on Mr. Biden’s part to engage in such prophylactic measures.    While even the largest rallies involve a miniscule percentage of the electorate, hence rendering this evidence anecdotal, maybe there is something to the excitement Mr. Trump generates that will have ramifications for the outcome of this contest.

 

Third, perhaps as a clue to the answer of the first, the demographic group that is most disproportionately represented among the non-voting is white males who do not possess a college degree.  If these guys show the same good judgment they showed in not being enticed by the schlock outfits trumpeting online college degrees to anybody capable of taking out a loan and do their patriotic duty by casting a vote in 2020, this would have very salubrious consequences for Mr. Trump’s re-election chances.   

 

Fourth, in the last week, two of my friends whom I consider astute in such matters have mentioned the possibility of Mr. Trump’s doing better among Black and, to a lesser extent, Latino voters than has historically been the case for Republicans.   There may very well be something to this argument.  Before COVID, Mr. Trump enjoyed a strong economy that saw historically low Black unemployment rates.   Mr. Trump’s  law and order message plays better in inner-city Black and Brown communities than the social justice warriors in the tonier suburbs suppose; people who live in neighborhoods plagued by crime can’t go home to Winnetka when the shooting starts and hence do not share as much enthusiasm as is assumed for such idiocy as “defunding the police” that seems to permeate the thinking of those desperate to virtue signal from a safe distance.  Further, nobody likes being taken for granted or told that they are not of their own race by somebody of another race.   While nobody is saying that Mr. Trump will put much more than a small dent in the historic overwhelming majorities Democrats have enjoyed with these two groups, it wouldn’t take much of shift to make a difference in such places as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina.   While I haven’t seen any good polling on this issue, I would not be at all surprised to see a decent showing by Mr. Trump among Black and Brown voters, especially men.

 

Fifth, my instantly seminal, now classic, but then lonely prediction of a resounding Trump victory in 2016  (TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16) was made four days before the election.  We are now a week away from the election and I sense this race is tightening.   But will it tighten enough to give us the kind of surprise it delivered in 2016 to those who don’t read yours truly’s posts?  Probably not, but don’t completely discount the possibility.

 

 

All those caveats having been written, there simply does not appear to be a chance for Mr. Trump to hold onto the White House.   Mr. Biden has run an excellent campaign, if only by following the advice of yours truly and several others to lie low, keep his head down, and keep the focus on Mr. Trump rather than on himself.  Mr. Biden has avoided glaring mistakes and let the media do his campaigning for him.   So Mr. Biden, barring something completely unforeseen, will be our president for the next four years.   If my prediction for a Democratic pick-up of the Senate comes true (SO YOU WANT A TIGHT ELECTION THIS YEAR?   YES SIR, SENATOR!, 10/19/20), the Supreme Court will be the only thing that stands between the Democrats and complete domination of the federal government…until the Dems eliminate that problem by packing the Court.

 

The GOP will have a lot of soul-searching to do.  Let’s hope they do it.  The Democrats surely didn’t, but it didn’t matter; the Republicans made it so easy for them they didn’t have to learn much of anything.

 

 

 

SO YOU WANT A TIGHT ELECTION THIS YEAR? YES SIR, SENATOR!

 

10/19/20

 

Most of the focus of political enthusiasts, and also of sensible people, has been on the presidential race for obvious reasons.  However, the race for control of the United States Senate may be more important.   Note that most observers of the election call the presidential election for Former Vice-President Joe Biden.   The only question regarding the House is the number of seats by which the Democrats expand their control of the “people’s House.”   Though I have yet to expound at great length on my presidential projections, at this point I don’t see how my amazingly prescient prediction of April 22 (See PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED)  will change materially.  So the Senate is the only game in town.   And that game couldn’t be more important.

 

Since Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, have both assiduously avoided answering questions regarding their intent to pack the Supreme Court, one can make one of two assumptions.  The first, and more popular, of these assumptions is that Mr. Biden has already decided that he will pack the Court, either of his own volition or, more likely, because he no longer has the intestinal fortitude, or even much of a desire, to stand up to the more impatient and leftist elements of his Party, but just doesn’t want to say it for fear of the loss of votes such a declaration would entail. 

 

The second, and yours truly thinks more valid, assumption is more nuanced.  Mr. Biden might like to pack the Court but his final decision on that matter, and on his decision to commit himself, is waiting for the results of the Senate election.   Declaring that he wants to pack the Court will require Mr. Biden to pay a political price; there are, after all, a few Americans who care about such things.  Why pay that price when the question will become moot if the Republicans retain control of the Senate?   A smart politician waits until his most controversial intentions become realistic possibilities before declaring those intentions.   Despite the contentions of the GOP and its media organs, Joe Biden remains a smart politician and isn’t going to waste political capital on a quest that may ultimately prove to be a quixotic one.    So any talk of a President Biden’s packing the Court will hinge on the outcome of the Senate election.

 

Court packing, of course, is not the only issue involved here.   If the Democrats pick up the Senate, the salubrious condition of divided government goes with it.    The Democrats will be free to put into place whatever agenda suits them, from admitting more states to the Union (Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. are most often mentioned) to put their control of the Congress on a more solid footing, to increasing taxes on all sorts of activities  they deem heinous or simply capable of producing more revenue to finance their agendae, to spending money like an inebriated seaman (though it would be hard to match the incumbent, before or after a now remotely possible re-election, on this score), to making the dreams of their more fervid, er, questioners of America’s legitimacy come true.    Of course, given the demoralized and self-doubting nature of many of the poltroonish politicasters who populate the GOP’s senatorial ranks, one wonders who much of a barrier a GOP senate would present to the lascivious designs of the Democrats, but that is another issue.   Surely, the country, or at least its government, will look much different with the presidency and both houses of the Congress in the hands of the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and those who regularly genuflect to her.

 

So how does the Senate race look?   Not good if you’re a Republican.

 

The GOP currently holds 53 senate seats.  The Democrats hold 45 seats and two seats are held by independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who consistently vote Democratic.   So the Democrats have to pick up

 

3 seats if Biden wins, since Vice-President Harris, as President of the Senate, would be able to break ties, and

 

4 seats if Trump wins, which would bring Democratic seats to 51, rendering Vice-President Pence’s tie-breaking vote moot.

 

However, the Democrats are going to lose their “accidental seat” in Alabama, which Doug Jones won in a 2017 special election over Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, in which Mr. Moore defeated himself amid allegations of sexual misconduct and a record that was too socially to the right even for Alabama voters.   Former Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville is the GOP standard-bearer and even his having been on the wrong side of the Iron Bowl for years will not dissuade Crimson Tide fans from supporting him.  Alabama is a sure GOP pickup.  Thus, the Democrats will need to pick up

 

4 seats outside Alabama if Mr. Biden wins and

 

5 seats outside Alabama if Mr. Trump wins.

 

While such an outcome will not be a cakewalk, it is a very realistic possibility.  Yours truly has the Democrats picking up

 

Arizona                 (Kelly over McSally)

Colorado             (Hickenlooper over Gardner)

Iowa                      (Greenfield over Ernst)   (This one breaks my heart, but I digress.)

Maine                   (Gideon over Collins)

 

That would be enough to control the Senate if, as seems likely, President Biden is inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

 

The Democrats, from my assessment of the numbers, might also pick up the Georgia seat for which a “jungle primary” special election is being held on election day, in which candidates of all parties will run with the first and second finishers competing in a run-off on January 5.   The current incumbent, Republican Kelly Loeffler, is weak and is facing a challenge from, inter alia, Republican Representative Doug Collins.   These two will split the Republican vote to a point at which the highest polling Democrat, Raphael Warnock, pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, will face one of them in the run-off.    This could be interesting for the Democrats and disastrous for the Republicans.   There is also a chance that the Democrats could pick up the other Georgia seat; Senator David Perdue does not hold as formidable a lead as one would suspect for a GOP incumbent in Georgia over journalist Jon Ossoff; a few legitimate polls, including Quinnipiac, have Ossoff leading.   So it is not much of a stretch to give one of the Georgia seats to the Democrats, which would put it in the proverbial can for the Democrats.  

 

Even if the Republicans hold onto both Georgia seats, they still are in trouble.    Republican incumbent Thom Tillis is in a close race in North Carolina against Cal Cunningham, or at least he was until Mr. Cunningham’s apparent penchant for prurient pictures came to light early this month.   Even assuming that Mr. Cunningham is done in, either by his engaging in a both real and cyber affair with a married (not to Mr. Cunningham) woman, which doesn’t play well in North Carolina, or by a sudden enthusiasm for Senator Tillis, the seat was only a bonus for the Democrats; they don’t need it to win the Senate.

 

There is also an outside chance that the Republicans could knock off Democrat incumbents Gary Peters (not the great White Sox pitcher, and occasional clean-up hitter, for the White Sox in the ‘60s) in Michigan and Tina Smith in Minnesota, but both are relative long-shots and would seem to require the coattails of Trump victories in states he is unlikely to carry.

 

So this looks like a Democratic pickup of the Senate, albeit by perhaps the slimmest of margins.  And I didn’t have to engage in such still extant in some quarters fantasies as Democratic pickups in Texas, South Carolina, or Kentucky to get there.  But if things really get bad for Mr. Trump on November 3, who knows what fate might befall say, Lindsey Graham?

 

Given the tightness of this race, one would not have to go too far out on a limb to declare that control of the Senate hinges on what happens at the top of the ballot.   If Mr. Trump somehow manages to pull out a miracle (I hesitate to say “of Biblical proportions” in this context.), it would at the very least raise the bar for Democratic control and could help the GOP in, say, Iowa among the states I have given to the Democrats and may even allow the Republicans to pull off a gobsmacker somewhere else. 

 

So our attention must turn to the presidential race, which is grist for another, perhaps the next, mill.

THE “FAIR TAX” IS A REALLY LOUSY IDEA EVEN BY ILLINOIS STANDARDS, AND HERE ARE THE NUMBERS TO SUPPORT THAT STATEMENT

 

10/5/20

 

For the last forty years, yours truly had supported many political ideas and causes, but none so fervently and continually as term limits and a flat income tax.   Consequently, it should come as no surprise that I vehemently oppose the proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that replaces our current flat income tax and replaces it with a progressive income tax that is being sold to us as the “fair tax.”

 

Those of us who support flat taxes do so for a number of reasons, including

 

·         A flat tax is more efficient and easier to file and administer than a progressive tax.

·         A flat tax affords fewer opportunities for exemptions, deductions, and other loopholes, thus, at least in this sense, rendering it “fairer” than a complicated progressive tax riddled with tax breaks for those who are able to catch the ear, usually with the help of generous campaign contributions and other financial inducements, of a sufficient number of public servants.

·         A flat tax presents far fewer opportunities for the government to allocate capital and direct human behavior.

·         A flat tax is far more, to use what has become a sickeningly trite adjective of late, transparent and hence makes it harder for our public servants to raise taxes, i.e., if there is one rate and few, if any, deductions and exclusions, the only way to raise taxes is to increase that one, highly visible, rate.   As much as they love raising tax revenue to spend as they please, public servants detest the political consequences of raising taxes.

 

While the flat tax currently in place in Illinois is not the ideal of those of us who have championed flat taxes for at least the last forty-five years, it does contain many of these features and thus should be kept in place.   Given the outrageous property taxes, cavernous unfunded pension liabilities, and general fiscal profligacy that prevails in the state, our flat income tax is one of the only things Illinois has going for it on the fiscal front; to dispense with it now would serve to court further financial disaster and hasten the exodus of productive citizens fleeing from the Land of Lincoln with nearly the sense of urgency of those fleeing the Lady Elgin, the Eastland, or any number of other Chicago area shipwrecks that serve as useful analogies for our fiscal situation.

 

The argument for dispensing with the flat tax is the specious and simplistic plaint that “people who make more should pay more.”    Who doesn’t agree with that statement?   Of course people who make more should pay more taxes, or at least more income taxes, than people who make less than they do.  And, under a flat tax, “rich” people (As yours truly has noted on numerous occasions in the past, the use of the term “rich” to describe people who should more properly be described as “high income” is not only obnoxious and silly, but shows a complete misunderstanding of economics, finance, and accounting, subjects on which one should be at least vaguely familiar before opining on matters of such great import and detail as tax systems, but I digress.) do pay more than, shall we say, “not so rich” people.   4.95% of a $1 million is a lot more than 4.95% of $50 thousand.   The proponents of the fairness argument will disingenuously (or maybe just ignorantly; it’s hard to tell sometimes) counter that, of course, they understand that under a flat tax “rich” people pay more in dollars than do “middle-class” people and they don’t mean to convey the impression that they don’t.   But they continue to run commercials in which people who reflect the upper-class conception of working-class people argue that “’rich’ people should pay more” without the “rate vs. dollar” qualifier.   Don’t think for one moment that these ads aren’t trying to convince people that, under the current system, “rich” people pay the same amount in taxes as they do, and also don’t doubt for one moment that, in perhaps enough cases to sway an election, these ads don’t succeed.   To put it nicely, not everybody pays attention, and many of those who don’t pay attention vote.  How’s that for a scary story during Halloween season?  

 

While the argument that “the ‘rich’ should pay more” is a complete canard, there is, on the surface, something to the slightly better argument in favor of the “fair tax,” to wit, that “working people” pay at the same rate as “the rich,” this is somehow wrong, and the progressive tax system that should replace our current flat tax will remedy this situation.   Reading directly from the booklet “Proposed Amendment to the Illinois Constitution” issued by Jesse White, our highly popular Secretary of State, under “Arguments in favor of the proposed amendment,” one finds the following more or less encapsulating statement:

 

“Under the Illinois ‘flat tax’ structure, a nurse making $50,000 per year pays the same tax rate as an executive making $4 million per year.   A graduated tax rate would have the executive pay more.”

 

Once one leaves aside the “pay more” at the end of this argument, which, again, one suspects is an attempt to catch the, er, less alert members of our electorate off-guard, this argument should appeal to yours truly, whose family is loaded with nurses.    However, as one who prefers thinking and analyzing to emoting, yours truly finds this argument nearly equally specious as the “’rich’ people should pay more” slogan.   Why?  Because the underlying assumption of this argument is that a progressive state income tax will necessarily address this perceived inequity, but an examination of the progressive rates in effect in comparable states counters that argument.   Please don’t get lost in these numbers; if your eyes glaze over, just continue reading to the punch line.

 

Let me interject here my thanks for a young and brilliant family member who pointed yours truly in the following direction.  I will not use his name because I have not cleared such usage with him, he works for a big corporation, and who knows what hellish consequences could ensue from advancing common sense arguments in a large and visible corporate entity in these febrile times?

 

Let’s examine the personal income tax brackets prevailing in those states that geographically border the Land of Lincoln and the same brackets in two obvious comparison states, New York and California.   We’ll confine our examination to the brackets for “married filing jointly” returns in order to keep the numbers from becoming stultifying; the brackets for individual filers tell the same story.

 

Here are the top tax brackets, and the income at which those brackets come into effect, for those state:

 

Wisconsin                            7.65%                    $ 345,720

 

Iowa                                      8.53%                    $  73,170

 

Missouri                               5.40%                    $    8,424

 

New York                             8.82%                    $2,155,350

 

California                             12.30%                  $1,181,484

 

Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan have flat state income taxes at the following rates:

 

Indiana                                 3.23%

 

Kentucky                             5.00%

 

Michigan                              4.25%

 

All three of the flat-tax states have local income taxes collected on the state form.   Note that only one of those three flat state taxes has a rate that exceeds Illinois’ current 4.95% rate.

 

What is interesting here is that, among those states listed with progressive tax brackets of the kind Governor J.B. Pritzker and his allies would like to install in Illinois, one “pays the same as the millionaires” at relatively modest incomes…$73,170 in Iowa and, for those who argue that $73 grand makes one rich and, presumably, worthy not only of higher taxation but also of scorn and derision, $8,424 in Missouri.   Even if you double that income to allow for some eccentricities in Missouri’s state income tax, less than $17,000 in income puts you the same bracket as, say, the head football coach at the University of Missouri.    Also, those highest tax rates at relatively modest incomes, 8.53% in Iowa and 5.40% in Missouri, are higher than Illinois’ current flat tax rate of 4.95%.   In fact, Iowa’s rate is higher, at the margin, than the highest proposed rate in Illinois of 7.99%, which is supposed to kick in at $1mm.   The actual top average rate in Illinois is much higher, however, because, at incomes greater than $1mm, ALL income, not only income greater than $1mm, is taxes at 7.99%.   Somebody wasn’t thinking when that provision was added; the marginal tax rate when one’s income goes from $999,999.99 to $1,000,001 is in the quadruple digits and falls very gradually from there, which doesn’t do much for incentives, but I digress.   And another caveat:   the tax rates proposed by Governor Pritzker and his allies in the House are not included in the proposed Constitutional Amendment itself; the Amendment authorizes a progressive tax but includes no rates.   The rates can be whatever the legislature and the governor want them to be.

 

One might contend that my argument falls apart because Wisconsin, New York, and California, three of my five comparison states with progressive taxes, really do “stick it to the man,” if one assumes such sticking is a good thing, because one has to be making a lot of money to be in the highest tax bracket in those states.   That’s not a bad argument until you consider how much you have to be making in those states to be paying at a higher rate than one is currently paying in Illinois, i.e., 4.95%.   Here are the incomes one needs to achieve in those states to reach a tax rate higher than 4.95% along with those rates: (Again, I am using “married filing jointly” rates in the interest of simplicity; using “single” rates would only enhance my argument.)

 

Wisconsin                            $15,680                 5.04%

 

New York                             $23,600                 5.25%

 

California                             $65,920                 6.00%

 

So these three states with progressive tax systems, akin to that the proponents of the “fair tax” amendment want for Illinois, tax relatively, or, in two cases by any measure, modest incomes at higher rates than does Illinois at the moment.

 

In what bracket would the nurse, cited in the arguments for the progressive tax, who earns $50,000 per year, find herself in these progressive tax states that Governor Pritzker, et. al., so desperately want to imitate?

 

Wisconsin                                            6.27%

 

Iowa                                                      7.44%

 

Missouri                                               5.40%

 

New York                                             6.21%

 

California                                             4.00%

 So the nurse would indeed pay at a lower rate than do the millionaires in three of these progressive income tax states.   S/he would actually get a break on his or her income taxes in California vs. Illinois.   However, s/he would pay more at the margin in all the progressive tax states, save California, and much more in all cases except possibly Missouri, than she currently does in Illinois.   We should also point out that, under the plan of Governor Pritzker, et. al, she would get a huge tax cut since the rates of those making under $100 thousand are being cut…from 4.95% to 4.75% for the first $10 thousand and from 4.95% to 4.90% for incomes between $10 thousand and $100 thousand.   In the case of our $50 thousand earning nurse, that is a whopping cut of $40.   Thanks, Governor.   We will also point out that in the flat tax states of Indiana and Michigan, our nurse’s taxes would change as indicated: 

Indiana                                 reduced by $860

 

Michigan                              reduced by $350

 

Kentucky                             increased by $25

 

No wonder people of relatively modest incomes are fleeing Illinois before Governor Pritzker, House Speaker Mike Madigan, Senate President Don Harmon, and their henchmen install the prairie version of the Berlin Wall to keep us here.   But I digress.

 

So why are tax rates so much higher in states with progressive income taxes than they are in flat tax states?   It goes back to one of the virtues of flat taxes I listed at the beginning of this admittedly overly lengthy post:   it is harder to raise a flat tax than it is to raise a progressive tax.   With a flat tax, our public servants have to raise one highly visible number, i.e., the state income tax rate, in order to raise state income taxes.  With a progressive tax, they can engage in all kinds of subterfuge and chicanery.    A particular favorite among our devoted public servants is to increase tax rates on “the rich” while leaving the “working poor” and the “middle class” alone but deciding what level of income makes one, in a complete bastardization of the term, “rich” and therefore subject to higher taxes along with vitriolic expressions of hatred and becoming the object of purportedly populist pernicious pabulum.   This can even be done without raising a single tax bracket by letting inflation render the tax brackets nearly meaningless; how do you suppose the top tax bracket, subject to a near eye-popping 8.53%, got as low as $73,170 in Iowa?   Not all that long ago, $73,170 was a handsome salary allowing its earner most of the trappings and benefits of being upper middle class.  Once upon a time, an income of $73 grand made one “rich.”   But now making $73 grand makes one “rich” only in the eyes of our public servants.

 

 

The only thing on the upcoming ballot yours truly really cares about is this tax amendment, and my elevating this issue above anything else we are voting on transcends my ambivalence toward half the candidates on the ballot and my near revulsion at the other half.    Yes, I have been a devotee of flat taxes nearly my entire adult life, but you don’t have to share my ideological affinity for this approach in order to oppose Governor Pritzker’s “fair tax” amendment.    You only have to realize that a progressive income tax will make raising taxes far easier than it is under the existing flat tax framework.   The experience of comparable states with progressive taxes, and consequently higher income taxes than those in Illinois, puts the lie to the Governor’s arguments that our tax system will be more “fair” and that the tax burden will consequently be lightened on the “middle class” and the “working poor.”   Even if you wind up paying taxes at a lower rate than does the millionaire next door (to Governor Pritzker), would paying taxes at a higher rate than you do now make you, or the state of Illinois, better off?

 

Our property taxes in this state are outrageous.   Our fiscal picture is horrifying.   The only thing we have going for us on the fiscal front, the only public policy that could keep businesses in this state and possibly attract new businesses, is our flat tax.   Don’t throw it over the side for the pipe dream of a “fair” progressive tax!

 

 

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work, or at least used to work, in Chicago and Illinois politics.