RUSH: The Chicago Federal Reserve has unveiled its solution to the pension problem. A speaker from the Chicago Fed — this is at an event that was sponsored by — it was last month — sponsored by the Civic Federation and the Federal Reserve Bank Chicago — Illinois has unfunded liabilities, particularly on pensions, that are off the charts.
“A speaker from the Chicago Fed proposed levying, across the state and in addition to current property taxes, a special property assessment they estimate would be about 1% of actual property value each year for 30 years.
“Homeowners with houses worth $250,000 would pay an additional $2,500 per year in property taxes, those with homes worth $500,000 would pay an additional $5,000, and those with homes worth $1 million would pay an additional $10,000,” a year for 30 years, on top of existing taxes.
Furthermore, you would not be able to escape this by selling your house and leaving. You know why? You’re not gonna be able to sell your house. Nobody’s gonna buy your house in Chicago with this kind of taxation on it.
In other words, they fully expect the value of you in Chicago and Illinois who own your homes, the value of those homes to plummet with the application of these new property taxes. So people arriving in the state are gonna be able to afford your house because you’re gonna have to practically give it away, which means you’re gonna lose every bit of equity and wealth you have in your house if you try to sell it and leave.
“Current homeowners would not be able to avoid the new tax by selling their homes and moving because home prices should reflect the new tax burden.” That means nobody’s gonna want to buy. They’re admitting, they’re admitting that the dynamic results of this is going to be to destroy the Illinois housing market, but that they have to do it to come up with some money to help fund underfunded pensions.
So, in other words, they’re just gonna confiscate wealth from current homeowners because they will pay, whether they stay or not, through an immediate reduction in home value. This proposed tax will only address five state pensions. There are 650 other pensions in Illinois, particularly those who overlap jurisdictions in Chicago, which are grossly underfunded.
But what is it? Maybe that’s another story. This is only going to — no. That’s Seattle, a different story. Different story. They have a per-employee tax they’re voting on in Seattle, which is causing Amazon to stop building their new headquarters.
These socialist-run places are in the midst of destroying themselves. They’ve got these unfunded pensions in Illinois, massive property tax increases, and you can’t even escape it by selling your house and moving because you probably won’t be able to sell your house, ’cause who’s gonna want to buy these new effective tax rates? It’s just mind-boggling here.
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