On Governor J.B. Pritzker’s desk is a proposal to give more benefits to Chicago unions.
Big Unaffordable Sweetener
The Illinois Policy Center comments on the Fiscal Recklessness of Illinois Politicians.
In the final days of session, Illinois lawmakers approved House Bill 3657, a pension “sweetener” for police and firefighter employees under Tier 2 pensions that would swell the city’s already staggering retirement debt. In the first year, it would cost $52 million to implement. By 2055, it would add $11.1 billion in accrued liabilities, according to city estimates.
Equable’s annual public pensions report shows seven of the nation’s 10 worst-funded local pensions are in Chicago. Chicago firefighters are in last place. Chicago Police are in third-to-last place. Both plans have about 25 cents of every dollar promised to workers.
HB 3657 boosts Tier 2 by changing the method used to calculate the final average salary for Chicago police from the average of the last eight years to the higher average between the last eight years or the last four years. By contrast, Social Security looks at the average earnings over the course of a worker’s entire career. This shorter time period reintroduces the risk of end-of-career pay spikes that drive up pension liabilities.
Another change it introduces for both Chicago police and firefighters is to the salary limit beyond which no higher pension can be earned. Currently, it sits at $127,283 and increases at the lower of either one-half of inflation or 3%. If this legislation is signed into law, it would instead increase at the lower of either the full rate of inflation or 3%, and start with a boost to $141,408 on July 1, 2025.
The city already faces a projected $1.2 billion budget shortfall in 2026, low credit ratings and the threat of higher property taxes. Now is not the time to be adding costs.
HB 3657 reached Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk on June 24. Illinois law gives him 60 days to sign, veto or amendatorily veto a bill.
That means he faces an Aug. 23 deadline to decide between a common-sense refusal or an approval that brings Chicago even higher property taxes and sinks city pensions closer to insolvency.
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This is a well thought out write up. I thought for sure the bill would pass. Not only that but EVERYBODY would hate this, and instead just throw their hands up and say I GIVE. It would be great just to watch everybody leave Illinois and move to KENTUCKY. THERE’S A PLACE HERE FOR ALL OF YOU. How’s the plan for a state line redraw to Indiana. 😂 😂
“This shorter time period reintroduces the risk of end-of-career pay spikes that drive up pension liabilities.”
Obviously an intentional feature, not a mistake.
The illegal compete with low skilled workers. Small businesses have access
to them. Large businesses don’t. Small businesses pool of workers is unlimited. Large businesses needs costly AI to become efficient. Large businesses have large numbers of sku. Mistakes, consumer taste shifts and bad items can kill them. Large co can pile debt. Small businesses don’t have access to banks. Small businesses buy small quantities. Large businesses buy in bulks with a discount. Small businesses can maneuver fast. Large co have a 5Y plan.
The very definition of insanity…
When an African country is too poor to pay the cops everyone laughs. When American states can’t pay their cops (pretty much all of them can’t outside of the NYPD which is a literal gang), it’s a fact of life.
My cop friend got injured on the job and had to pay for his own treatment out of pocket. Can someone make that make sense? It’s no wonder our cops are either criminals or racists: who else would put up with this crap without an ulterior motive? Not many.
How is that even possible?
Are there no laws?
This is the most obvious example of a scam/ponzi one could imagine.
Where I live, all pension funds are mandated to maintain 105% funding to liability ratios. And yes, when returns disappoint, benefits are adjusted until the ratio improves.
Can Gavin (57) or Josh Shapiro (52) beat the reps in Nov 2027.
Shapiro has the better chance since he appears moderate.
Got gold and silver? A passport for another country helps too.
Doesn’t even look at the State of IL pensions. That would be a book instead of an article
And to those who think it’s overstated. What happens when stocks really correct?
There are 800.000 homeless people in the US. CA has the most, about 200K.
DC and US park service employees cleared homeless encampment several times. Encouraged by the dems they built a tent city near the white house again. Trump ordered to clear them. The dems call him inhumane. CA Olympic in 2028. Gavin ordered to clear tent cities. He supported the homeless with housing and healthcare. CA provides billions to local gov. Gavin invested $9B for home key in vacant office buildings. SF has the most.
But funding projections like this tend to be overly pessimistic in order to motivate sound financial planning and encourage fiscal prudence. Surely the reality of the situation isn’t this dire!
/s
(did you really need to see this?)
Highest Paid, least effective. THAT is a summary of how Illinois is operated.
Since socialist largesse funded by debt is in evidence, I suspect Illinois residents may decide to pack their bags and emigrate to more tax friendly states. Is it already happening?
Looks like the EU might be up next:
Trump’s Meeting with a Key European Official Comes as His Tariff Deadline Nears | Newsmax.com
Aberdeen is Europe oil hub. N. Sea oil extraction peaked in 2000 at 1M boed. in 2029: 600K boed. Norway benefitted the most from oil extraction.
Oil extraction from the N. Sea. Alaska, USSR and the Gulf of Mexico tames
inflation for two decades between 1980 and the 90’s.
up next for what?
lies, like with the Japan deal?
the bestest, bigliest deal ever, based on an hours conversation, twisted into a shape with sharpies on a poster that Trump thinks is best for him?
just a new twist on tacos–face-saving tacos
just like the old Soviet union joke–“they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”
15% tariffs on vehicles which is up from the 2.5% in 2020
15% reciprocal tariffs
$550B in investment commitments from Japan in the USA
Cars, trucks rice & other agriculture products now have greater access to Japanese markets. As for cars, it’s my understanding that previously US cars exported to Japan had to meet more rigorous Japanese standards than what are required in the US, effectively making exports nearly impossible. Now Japan will allow the US to export any vehicle to Japan that meets only US safety requirements.
I call that WINNING!
And what NEW trade deal did your boy Brandon get from Japan or country for that matter?
THE ABSOLUTELY HILLARIOUS PART ABOUT EVERYONE’S CARPING ABOUT TRUMP’S TRADE WAR / DEALS IS THAT IT’S LIKE YOU ALL WANT AMERICA TO FAIL. JOE BIDEN DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO STRENGTHEN AMERICA’S ECONCOMIC POSITIION. IN FACT, A VERY STRONG ARGUMENT CAN BE MADE THAT HE DID THE EXACT OPPOSITE.
And I’m not saying you all were cheerleading for Biden. In addition, do I like everything that Trump is doing as part of these trade wars? Absolutely not. But I realize that once it’s all done, the US is going to be vastly strongly economically than what we were on January 19th, 2025.
It’s going to be night & day, and all the anti-Trump whining here on Mishtalk isn’t going to do a damn thing from stopping that from happening.
So silly
“I just signed the largest trade deal in history, I think maybe the largest deal in history, with Japan,” Trump boasted Tuesday. But a new report from The Financial Times demonstrates that U.S. and Japanese officials don’t see eye to eye on what exactly the countries agreed upon.
According to Trump and his administration, in return for a reduction in tariffs, Japan would invest $550 billion in certain U.S. sectors and give the United States 90 percent of the profits.
But Japanese officials say profit sharing under the agreement isn’t so set in stone: A Friday slideshow presentation in Japan’s Cabinet Office, contra the White House, said profit distribution would be “based on the degree of contribution and risk taken by each party,” per The Financial Times.
The FT also reports conflicting messages between Washington and Tokyo as to whether that $550 billion commitment is, as team Trump sees it, a guarantee or, as Japan’s negotiator Ryosei Akazawa sees it, an upper limit and not “a target or commitment.”
Mireya Solís, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Financial Times that the deal contains “nothing inspiring,” as “both sides made promises that we can’t be sure will be kept” and “there are no guarantees on what the actual level of investments from Japan will be.”
The inconsistent interpretations of the deal could possibly be owing to the fact that it was hastily pulled together over the course of an hour and 10 minutes between Trump and Akazawa on Tuesday, according to the FT, which cited “officials familiar with the U.S.-Japan talks.” And, moreover, “Japanese officials said there was no written agreement with Washington—and no legally binding one would be drawn up.”
Some are thus beginning to wonder whether Trump’s avowed “largest deal in history” even technically counts as a deal at all. Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on X: “If something like this is not ‘papered’ it isn’t really a deal.”
Thanks
Trump is already bragging about something in the EU bill that is impossible
I will discuss this afternoon
Borrowed from a ZH poster.
Just a little news here you won’t hear from the MSM. I placed an order for LTE modems from China and got them in over 2 months ago. Fortunately for me, this was a very small order, otherwise it could have really hurt. Last week I get a bill from FedEx, generated by the Dept of Homeland Security for the TARIFF. Luckily the Chinese vendor undervalued the order by a third so the bill is just for $215. I normally place orders for $20-30,000 which would have generated a bill of about $10k.
Now how in the world they can charge a tariff AFTER the goods have been delivered is beyond me. Imagine you are a wholesaler…you sell electrical parts….breakers, wire, etc. You get in $2 million in product and promptly resell it for $2.5 million. You think you have made $500k which of course doesn’t include your cost of being in business and shipping cost to end users. All of a sudden you get a bill for $650,000. This could easily bankrupt a small company.
Remember….you heard it here first
This deal is a lot better than what we had with Japan on 1/19/2025.
You can slice & dice it all you want along with the FT who is quite anti-Trump, but it doesn’t change the fact that in 2-3 months, Trump has gotten Japan to agree to several important trade changes.
The EU is up now. More to follow. We’ll look forward to your attempt to tear that one down.
Again, see my point above about wanting America to fail. You’re nailing it, dude! Keep it up! And for the millionth time, follow what Trump does & not what he says. Thus far, all of these deals make America better off economically which is the goal.
4 days left. Let’s see what CA might have cooked up.
In 19 counties nobody died in Illinois, 1:30 in –
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eWZYKDYCcBo
Miller’s cong district is in the southern Amish part of Illinois. When you get west of I-39 and south of I-80 it is quite a different state. The corn crop all along Illinois route 17 east-west crossing the whole state is doing great as of last week, by the way.
The dynamics which changed DuPage and Kane counties were: the emergence and coming of age of the AWFLs; those fleeing Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago for ‘a nice backyard’ (wink, wink to the realtor); and corporate FIRE transferees from ‘the east’ starting around Obama I.
But it’s for the children! To make them dumb and nice and fat as sacrifices to Baal …
The 20th century flow of masses of humans to factories and armies in urban centers is so passe. Huge re-valuation and re-pricing of various human resources is underway, acknowledged or not. Will turn into a more overt reclassification, resorting, in some manner. Likewise with unbalanced financial assets and pools like pensions. People and structures are being nudged out on the risk curve.
Pritzker types are selling 20th century-based childish dream worlds, writing checks with other peoples’ resources their backsides (or anyone’s) can’t pay. Every place and person must justify an economic prospective value, as new granular scrutiny appears across networks: viewers are now viewees.
The more concentrated and outmoded cities may get even more unpleasant. The 20th century social package deal for wealthy country humans is being unpackaged and reset.
That is why the world builds tower blocks.
Rich call them condos.
But prisons where everyone is centrally located.
Taxes, Debt, insurance costs, politics, illegals…. That’s why we got the hell out last year. We moved to a small town in KS. This is a great red state. Republicans have a super majority in the house and Senate.
And? I gather you assume there is no cronyism nor nepotism with the color red.
Red Good, Blue Bad. I say, RED WHITE AND BLUE are all BAD. Black, too. Color is a problem. Let’s just fix problems. Therein lies the rub. NO ONE knows what to do now that we are so deeply entrenched and the power classes are just fine.
I want to know who down votes the realization nepotism and cronyism exists in all systems.
I sure as hell bet there’s LESS Wilbur, not more.
Anyhoo, Laura & her family are going to be WAY better off which is the whole point, dude.
How? Same system.
“Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on.”
― Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics
She moved to Kansas, dude! If you’ve got a good job & believe in conservative values, then she’s now ready to rock & roll. The sky is the limit for her & her family.
Your entire reply is a bunch of nonsense.
Less? Are we speaking of machines running everything or flawed greedy self interested humans?
I don’t even know what that means.
The last I checked, the Terminator wasn’t running around killing people just quite yet. And my bet, Kansas will be one of the last places he makes it to, if & when it happens.
Come back to reality, Wilbur.
You’re implying that no state has better fiscal management than Illinois. They’re all the same, equally bad. That’s silly.
The basic principles remain the same across all institutions.
Woohoo!!!
Go, Laura!
CONGRATULATIONS!
Good for you and yours, Laura; I believe in markets and people having the choice to do what’s best for them.
But before you rant too high and mighty, you might also want to note you went from living in a state that contributes more to the nation than it takes back; to a state that is a taker. https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/
So you’re one of the latter now; congrats?
Chicago is growing. 60K illegal immigrants poured in since 2022, seeking sanctuary. Many are staying in hotels, shelters, O’Hare airport, parks or in the streets. Chicago spent $500 millions on them. “Community organizers” feed them, provide legal services, healthcare and resettlement assistance. Est cost: $2.5B by the end of 2025, mostly on healthcare. The illegals created tension and with the black community. They compete with them on low skilled jobs. Their criminal gangs compete with Louis Farrakhan strongmen, who hates cockroaches…Venezuela Tren de Aragua vs Tyron Muhamed.
Based on New York City billing, the FED for 22 billion to support their sanctuary status… I’m sure Chicago is looking for those of us in the more sane areas to pick up the tab for their fiscal irresponsibility
Hotels and apartments south of Midway airport, including adjacent southwest ‘burbs, down Cicero to State Road and 79th / 87th streets.
Wasn’t Obama a neighborhood guy?
– On Governor J.B. Pritzker’s desk is a proposal to give more benefits to Chicago unions. > A Joke Right? Where does this Money come from? The Sky? Not the City, that’s for sure…
Chicago in a Nutshell:
1. Transit System – A Cess Pool of Crimes, Drugs, Mayhem & Deviance of all sorts. Regular Citizens only ride it out of pure necessity.
2. School System – A Cess Pool of Crimes, Drugs, Mayhem,& Deviance of all sorts. Regular Citizens go to Private School if affordable, Teach from Home if Available, and just may just not Go Period. Oh, and Teachers Don’t Teach, judging by the scores and Reading, Writing, and Just Speaking in full sentences shows you.
3. Parks – See Transit System above. Mostly used for Selling/Doing Drugs,
4. Police/Fire – Have had there B#&$s snipped, and out of curiosity, are they even allowed to carry weapons anymore? The absence of them, and out of control crime etc. says otherwise.
5. Municipal – In Chicago? WTF is that? Where is it, how does it operate, how many workers 3 or 4? Show me where they have been and what they have done over the last week, and you win a prize!
It’s simply become “Silly Stupid” at this point… Thankfully Chicago cannot Print Money!!!
4) Police – check out Secondcitycop/blogspot
That’s a great sight! Every City in America needs one of these!! Where are the Voters, or is it that rigged, or maybe the Residents just don’t care? It’s incapable of me to think someone with a way out, wouldn’t be gone. Maybe that’s it, as everyone that could and wanted to leave, have gone. Now it’s SF on Steroids, as the entire State is Gone, and not just a city, which is bad enough, just ask any “Major Democrat Run City inhabitants”,and they will tell you…
Youve never seen any of this and you just like hearing yourself pretend to be smart.
The Pritzker family metastasize and colonize Harvard. The pathways to SNAP and other state gov goodies was growing out of whack. The disability pool on Medicaid was expanding by defunding the police, the fire dept and by piling unrealized debt. By raising Chicago min wage to $16.60 more people got unemployment checks financed by higher taxes and debt. Pritzker and Chicago mayor command and controlled voters. The middleclass sold their houses at a loss and fled. Those pathways fed the dems cancer cells everywhere.
CA unemployment rate is 5.5%, the highest in the US. Illinoi unemployment rate is 4.8%.
Don’t mistaken that to mean “No Income” as it appears the Money Flows to them, but just not the normal “Work For It” old fashion way of making money…
Go to the website US Debt Clock . org and go to the top left of that site to look for the state debt clocks.
Illinois has twice as much debt per citizen as Florida :-/
Doesn’t Florida have twice the Population of Illinois?
Florida Population: 23,372,215
Illinois Population: 12,710,158
My Bad, not quite double…
Please re read my original post as I stated the statistic of debt per Illinois citizen versus debt per Florida citizen. So that normalizes the data to essentially make a leveled or fair comparison.
Many of “the good neighborhoods”.
River North used to be the restaurant / bar / upscale hotel playground of the out-of-town business expense account set.
And yet, when we look at the big numbers, the American story continues to be the enriching of the rich. The (upper) middle class is only hanging on due to the salaries and benefits of the cops, firemen, nurses and teachers. I dont think you have to worry much. Whatever money the unions manage to squeeze out of the cities, states and counties, it always seems to end up in the bank accounts of the private equity and hedge fund managers, which is the only goal of the Republican party anyway (yes, I know Mish isnt Republican, but he caucuses with them 🙂 ). Im pretty sure we dont want to become a feudal society any FASTER than we are now, huh?
If the players grow fragmented past a point, the only kinds of engineered solution to get them back into an order can be more harrowing than perhaps we (whether “we” are haves or have-nots) are ready to imagine. I have “immediacy bias,” being immersed in a bio of Stalin. I can only hope we are not on a trajectory to recapitulate the lessons of the 20th century, but I can’t help thinking we are. Newly surging leadership with no realistic conception of that is a scary part of it. Cartoon TV-“reality” performative violence pretensions is an example.
Such a fragmentation could certainly be happening in a free-expressive society, tech-splintering personal realities, with a tattered welfare state growing more zero-sum. The parts that connect things and people are pushing out on risk curves, such as a fragmenting financial system with all sorts of exotic and unregulated entrants.
Rick and Morty and the Snowpiercer movie reveal how stupid society is. How power controls from below and above.
Sharpton was an FBI asset. Epstein and Diddy according to Whitney Webb all assets within the same circle of control.
none ever realizes they are simply a statistic to someone else.
The real issue is that humanity has never truly evolved beyond rich/poor. It has always kind of been a steady state. The problem now is due to monetary devaluation the rich seem to be richer. But none of that is pocket wealth like the old days.
Without getting a unique line of credit how many assets does a billionaire have to sell off to have a billion dollars in hard cash?
We the people don’t have access, insider access, along the same channels.
Then again at least we don’t have Dalits. Nope just dark skinned illegal immigrants.
To restate from another thread there is always some one with a bigger hammer no matter how rich you are. The people with true power we never learn the names they never starve and use corporate and government insider assets to thrive.
We can assume that the middle class was possible because of the post-ww2 spending, but since that is over, can capitalism create a middle class on its own? How does crony capitalism screwup the process? Anyway, all those well paid government employees that do the majority of the work of keeping this society from being rich and poor only will go on for a while. But history says all the cash and credit will eventually go to those poor rich people.
The more chum cast into the water, the more fish show up at the polls.
True, but Pritzker already gets all the votes he can out of Chicago. I don’t think a Republican even has a chance stateside. So he could do the right thing and veto this bill. If he doesn’t, it’s likely because he thinks kissing union ass will give him a leg up in running for president. I don’t know about you, but he doesn’t look presidential to me. William Howard Taft was 112 years ago – well before television.