The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board has a warning for Illinois: Change or else.
Why?
Because youngins are leaving the state for college and not coming back.
Why?
Because my home state has turned into a socialist hellhole.
Illinois has become the oldest state in the country, and it’s not getting better:
To put it bluntly, our pipeline is drying up. We’ve lost than 185,000 people ages 18 and younger compared with 2020, a 6% decrease. Cook County lost the bulk of these youngsters, with its 18-and-under population decline accounting for over half of the state’s total.Meanwhile, the retiree population grows. Illinois’ median age is now 39.4 — nearly five years older than in 2000 — and rising steadily.Twenty-five years ago, Illinois was younger than the rest of the U.S. on average — today, that’s no longer true.Yes, the U.S. population is aging overall — but Illinois is aging faster than most.That’s true for several reasons.First, outmigration, particularly of younger people and families.Illinois faces a demographic double bind. Not only are fewer women of childbearing age remaining in the state because of persistent outmigration, but those who stay are having fewer children than their counterparts elsewhere. Our birth rate already lags behind most states — particularly those in the South and West — and the gap is growing. The long-term implications for our workforce, tax base and economic vitality are hard to ignore.
The editorial board hits the nail on the head: “A dwindling youth population means shrinking potential — not just economically, but in civic energy, creativity and community life. That’s bad news for a state that depends on young people to power its workforce and its future.”
Illinois Policy (a great website!) wrote in March that Illinois lost a resident “every 9 minutes and 21 seconds from July 2023 to July 2024.”
I mean: “Illinois lost a total of 56,235 residents to other states from July 2023 to June 2024.” Again, socialism:
Surveys of those who have left the state – where taxes are not a response option – showed the major reasons Illinoisans have chosen to leave have been for better housing and employment opportunities, both of which have been made worse by poor public policy in Illinois.High taxes were the No. 1 reason why Illinoisans considered leaving the state. Polling from NPR Illinois and the University of Illinois found 61% of Illinoisans thought about moving out of state in 2019, and the No. 1 reason was taxes. The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute found 47% of Illinoisans wanted to leave the state, and “taxes are the single biggest reason people want to leave” with 27% of respondents citing taxes as the motive for departing in 2016. More recent polling conducted by Echelon Insights in 2023 substantiated those sentiments.
Gov. JB Pritzker knows losing young people is a problem, even if he brushes off the concerns of others, because he signed bills to make “college more accessible and affordable.”
The Illinois Board of Higher Education pointed out that almost “half of Illinois high school graduates who go on to college pursue degrees out of state.”
Pritzker said: “There is a 70% likelihood that when they get to whatever that university is outside of Illinois, they’re not coming back. That’s a real problem, so we want to keep our best and brightest in the state.”
My parents moved back because my mom wanted to be near her sisters. She even lives down the street from one of them.
I know my mom regrets it, not just because my brother and I live in Oklahoma, but because Illinois continues to spiral out of control.
I love Illinois. I love Chicago. Both are home. Both will always be home, even though I adore and love Oklahoma.
I know I say this all the time, but I’m not going to stop because it breaks my heart. I would return home in a heartbeat if the state didn’t suck so much.
I would even move back if it showed any signs of moving away from socialism.
No one has seen that with the elections of Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
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