Kolek planning to go pro
I am not worried about the crime as much as I am worried the general financial condition of the state.When I moved to Illinois, the personal income tax rate was 2%, the sales tax rate was 5.5%, my annual property taxes were 2% of my property's value, and the state was in decent financial shape. When I left, the personal income tax rate was 4.95%, the average sales tax was almost 9%, my property taxes were 3% of my property's value, and the state is teetering on bankruptcy.Yes, Chicago is a fun place to live for a few years as a young adult, and there are career opportunities there (for now, at least), if someone asked me for recommendations as to where to relocate and set down roots, Illinois would not be on the list. I am not looking to change anyone's mind; it's just my opinion as someone who spent most of her life there.
Sadly, nobody wants to do anything about it. Consider what has happened in the last three months: Boeing left for DC; Caterpillar left for Dallas; and, the scariest of the them all, Citadel Holdings for Miami. Most of what was once Fortune 500 corporations headquartered in Chicago are gone -- the banks mostly have been acquired, the insurance companies are headquartered elsewhere and the manufacturers largely a shell of their former selves. The largest company left headquartered in the area is McDonald's or Walgreens!If this isn't a canary in the coal mine, I don't know what is!I have know idea what the end game will be, but like you and Glow, I aint going to be around to suffer the consequences.
For those who .. lived somewhere in adulthood for XX years, then moved away: How'd you deal with the loss of acquaintances/friends?While so many folks move somewhere else when the kids are grown or after retirement .. I've thought about it too, but I find it hard to comprehend how one flushes 95% of the relationships you've built over the years and start over.I think it'd be cool to live in the mountains and/or somewhere warm in the winter, but the thought of zeroing out the people I know seems like such a negative, I'd feel very alone in my new beautiful atmosphere.So for those who did it .. how was that aspect?
Sorry, but this is plainly false. While there's still MUCH work to be done, Illinois is in better financial shape today than at any time since the mid 90s. It's nowhere near bankruptcy (which is impossible, anyhow).Every rating agency has upgraded the state's bond rating in the last year - the first time that's happened in two decades. The massive backlog of unpaid bills that resulted from Bruce Rauner's ruinous attempt to break the unions has been chopped down from $17 billion to $3 billion. A bunch of short-term loans needed to fund the government because Rauner refused to have been repaid. The latest budget has a $1.7 billion surplus, compared to $3.2 billion deficit when Rauner left office. The pension shortfall, while still massive, has been trimmed 10 percent and is no longer the worst in the country. Illinois is still far from what anyone would call good financial shape, but it's far better than just a few years ago and is by no means "teetering on bankruptcy" ... which, again, is an impossibility, since states cannot legally declare bankruptcy.Regardless, not many 23-year-olds care about property taxes or pension obligations or a state's bond rating when contemplating where to live.
In fact, please share your thoughts on this:The Chicago area set a record for corporate relocations and expansions in 2021, according to Site Selection magazine, making it the top metropolitan area in the United States for investment for the ninth consecutive year.There were 441 qualifying deals in greater Chicago last year with a combined $2.8 billion in investments, 18,368 new jobs and 59 million square feet of expansion space, according to a statement Tuesday from the Georgia-based magazine and Chicago officials.https://www.tmg-rea.com/chicago-remained-no-1-for-corporate-relocations-expansions-in-2021-magazine-says
The fact remains that Illinois as a whole lost population in the last 10 years.
Not even sure how accurate this is, but US News listed state's fiscal stability.Illinois is lasthttps://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/fiscal-stability#:~:text=Alaska%20is%20the%20top%20state,top%2010%20Best%20States%20overall.
Brother Rocket:Yes, Solon Springs. My parents were both from Superior and my Dad spent his summers growing up on Upper St. Croix Lake. My parents place was on Island Lake, just east of Upper St. Croix. It was built in 1968 and then added on in 1980 and 1990. We spent our summers there as children from 1968 until I was graduated from Marquette. My parents retired there and lived full-time in Solon from 1990 until my Mom died in 2005 and my Dad in 2018. Even though my parents migrated 1,000 miles away to Nashville for a good part of their adult lives, this is living proof of the theory in this thread that inevitably, many go home. Solon Springs is 30 miles from where they both grew up.If you've ever been to the Lucius Woods Performing Arts Center, my parents founded it. My Mom also was Chairwoman of the St. Croix School Board and was appointed by Governor Thompson to the Wisconsin Arts Council. My Dad was Chairman of the Douglas County Development Authority and played a big role in helping save the oil refinery in Superior. Dad also did the engineering work for Hidden Greens and was instrumental in getting that course developed. The course is about a mile north of my parents' old place.Chili is married to the daughter of one of my parents' high school classmates and actually knew my parents!
Well this just showed up in my Facebook feed:https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/chicago-among-top-10-us-cities-homebuyers-are-looking-to-leave-report/ar-AAZXFqL
None of the above discuss has convinced me that Chicago is a bad place to live. My son and his family still lives there, one of my best friends just moved to Lincoln Park from Wisconsin and absolutely loves it, and I still have numerous friends who live there and vow they'd never live anyplace else.Bad things happen there occasionally, too -- like anywhere else USA. Oklahoma is melting, St. Louis is under water, Florida is feuding with Disney, Texas is having problems with its grid, California is on fire, Arizona has no water, there have been 1000+ monkeypox cases in NYC, and there have been numerous horrific shootings in small towns this year.
None of the above discuss has convinced me that Chicago is a bad place to live. My son and his family still lives there, one of my best friends just moved to Lincoln Park from Wisconsin and absolutely loves it, and I still have numerous friends who live there and vow they'd never live anyplace else.Bad things happen there occasionally, too -- like anywhere else USA. Oklahoma is melting, St. Louis is under water has Cardinals fans, Florida is feuding with Disney, Texas is having problems with its grid, California is on fire, Arizona has no water and Denver will be there soon, there have been 1000+ monkeypox cases in NYC, and there have been numerous horrific shootings in small towns this year.
Look, nobody is suggesting Chicago is bad place. What we are suggesting is that the city and state have serious financial problems. People who live here now have a massive tax burden (state, federal and local), with our property taxes being among the most severe in the United States. The financial problems are going to be someone's burden to solve, especially since nobody in government now wants to truly deal with it.Illinois' governor tried to get Pension relief in the Covid-19 relief bills. That went nowhere!Sure Florida's governor has picked a fight with Disney that neither side can win. It's stupid, especially since Disney is our state's largest private sector employer and has delayed moving 2,600 creative jobs to Lake Nona for at least two years. It's also stupid because Disney has a way of biting our governor in the backside if and when he runs for President.Finally, YES MISSOURI HAS CARDINAL FANS. One of its finer points!
This is not a fact.Illinois suffered significant undercounting during the 2020 census, leading to the mistaken conclusion that the state lost residents over the previous ten years — when in reality it added more than a quarter of a million people and swelled to its largest population ever.That’s the stunning revelation from a report the U.S. Census Bureau itself released on Thursday, admitting that its ten-year head counts were off in more than a dozen states.https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-undercounted-in-2020-census-actually-grew-to-13-million-the-states-largest-population-ever/2837753/
I'm not sure I'd make a point with the Lovely Allison News. Yikes!Channel 5 News is an embarrassment to the news profession. It's the most shallow reporting on earth, matched only by Channels 2 and 7 in Chicago.I won't go into the census other than to say, what's official is official. States that lose Congressional seats and federal dollars due to a declining percentage of the U.S. are going to scream about undercount. You generally don't hear the same chorus in Texas, Florida or Tennessee.Officially, Illinois lost population. Call me back in 10 years when we have the next census.
We've now made 3 major moves as adults and didn't know a single soul in 2 of them (Minneapolis and Charlotte). It comes down to a few things ...How easily do you make friends? Are you willing to join groups of like-minded people even if you don't know anybody? Are you an extrovert or introvert? For example, within a couple months after moving to Charlotte, I found out who ran the local Marquette chapter and we went to the game-watching get-togethers they had for the season opener and Madison. We made a few friends on those occasions that we still hang out with today. We have friends through my wife's work, through my umpiring and coaching, and who live in our neighborhood. I played in a softball league for 5 years and am still very friendly with several of those guys, a number of whom are either in my poker group, my beer group or both.As for those we left behind ... first and foremost, our son still lives in Chicago and now he has a wife and kids. So we get there several times a year. And on most of those occasions we make the effort to get together with good friends from our Chicago years. (They've also visited us here.)And it's not like the olden days when it was out of sight out of mind; nowadays IG, FB, FaceTime, etc, can keep you up with what's going on "back home" pretty darn well.But I certainly can see how a person who is a little shy or who is extremely attached to his or her group of friends wouldn't want to move. And it helps explain why most don't.