Last night was the Earth night here in Chicago when they turned out the lights for an hour. I found it slightly ironic that the next day we had a big blizzard here in Chicago, and we have been sorely lacking in any of the promised rise in temperature with another brutal winter. Here is the link to the video.
Chicagoania
“Benefit?” of the Real Estate Collapse
Many stories have been written about the victims and losses in the collapse of real estate values, but few about the “winners”. Here’s one:
Coyote Ugly! This fine establishment (I am reminded of the line in Animal House when the fraternity representative is defending the Delta house by saying that it has “A long history of existence”) sits on what would appear to be a very valuable tract of land in the River North area of Chicago. Given that the Coyote can’t be a high rent tenant and it takes up a lot of a city block, you’d figure that some real estate developer would knock it down (wouldn’t take much, the damn thing is practically a tent and it is a wonder that it doesn’t just blow over)and put up a big condominium or the like.
But now that NO ONE can get financing for any type of new construction (and the existing construction is at risk of sitting there, half completed) the Coyote will be protected, likely for many years, since this bust will take a while before the animal spirits of capitalism rise again in the form of easy bank loans to finance condominium construction. In the interim period we will have to rely on the low power of that scavenging, mangy Coyote animal on this prime piece of real estate.
Cross posted at LITGM
WSJ Opinion Article on Illinois Taxes
The WSJ recently wrote an opinion piece on the Illinois tax increases which I wrote about here called “The Taxing Illini”. From the article:
This is a state that does almost everything wrong economically. It is not a right-to-work state and is thus heavily unionized, repelling new business investment. It has the fifth highest minimum wage among the states, the fifth most trial-lawyer friendly legal code, the sixth highest workers’ compensation costs, and the 11th highest property taxes. It has one of the highest inheritance taxes, at 16%, so retirees flee to states with no death tax, such as Florida and Arizona. A rare Illinois advantage has been its relatively low income-tax rate, but that will shrink or vanish under Mr. Quinn’s increase.
The sad part about this article is that they failed to mention that Illinois has pretty much the highest sales tax rate of any state in the country, and in Cook County the rate is higher than 10% with relatively few exemptions. I guess they just ran out of bad things to say about the state, or figured that the “slaughter rule” was in effect, kind of like in that recent WBC game featuring the USA team.
Cross posted at LITGM
Business Idea?
I was out walking in the River North area last night when I came upon a bona-fide white Bentley with this sign on the side.
If anyone wants to call the number and hear the “plan” and post it up as a comment that would be interesting.
Cross posted at LITGM
It’s Not Reform
Illinois, like most states, is in the throes of a financial crisis. Our new governor, Pat Quinn, now is leading the financial and budget process.
One of the few financial areas in which Illinois has a sensible tax policy is with regards to the state income tax. The state income tax is a flat 3%, tied to the Federal form (many other states are very complex, with graduated rates, and they diverge significantly from the Federal returns on key points of logic). Note that the state tax rate is supposed to be 2.5% but a 0.5% “surcharge” was added ostensibly to pay for transit and this was never rescinded. By contrast, Illinois has some of the highest sales tax rates in the nation, with Cook County and Chicago at over 10%, and we have high property taxes, as well.
Pat Quinn has now proposed a 50% tax hike, from 3% to 4.5%. In this requested tax hike, he is extremely deceptive and calls it tax “reform”, as noted in this headline from the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Quinn’s idea of reform, however, is reform as only a hard-core re-distributionist Democrat could see it – the structure of the tax is now being graduated so earners under a certain amount around $60,000 would pay about the same and high earning individuals and families would pay much more.
Mr. Quinn – here are some ideas for ACTUAL reform, as to how it is defined in the real world, not the act of giving some people the same tax rates and charging others a disproportionate amount: