The holiday season of giving isn’t quite here yet, but most other states, which are centrist or conservative, surely are thankful for what Illinois sends them every year.
First, there’s power. Illinois has lost Congressional representation in every decennial reapportionment since 1970, with its number of seats dropping from 24 to 17. Illinois’ votes in the Electoral College to elect the president dropped by the same number. That lost power shifted mostly to fast growing, more conservative states.
Then there’s money. Tons of it. In the last reported year alone, $9.8 billion of net, personal, adjusted gross income ran off from Illinois to other states as a result of losing a net 87,000 residents. Those are hard numbers published by the Internal Revenue Service for 2022. Illinois would have collected taxes on that income had it stayed here. At Wirepoints, we estimated that the state lost out on about $400 million of income tax revenue for the year.
The cumulative loss of all that income and tax revenue is staggering when you add in the lost income from those who fled just since 2000. Nearly $88 billion in income fled that the state couldn’t tax in 2022 because of the cumulative losses. That means Illinois would have had $3.6 billion more in income tax revenue in 2022 alone if it had not bled residents for 23 years.
And that’s just income taxes. Had they stayed, those taxpayers would have been making charitable contributions here, paying sales and property taxes here and so on.
Next, there’s the political reshuffling other states surely like. Evidence from many sources says clearly that far left states like Illinois are losing the most population, the other biggest losers being California, New York and Massachusetts. Other evidence says the movers are mostly right of center, though left-leaning voters are also moving to more progressive states in significant numbers.
“Hurray,” say many Illinois progressives about that, and “good riddance.” But the opposite is true in most other states. They’re surely thrilled to be rid of leftist voters and welcome others. Florida is the prime example of that, having shifted from balanced to solidly Republican over just the last eight years. Gov. JB Pritzker says, “Illinois is the most progressive state and damn proud of it” but that’s no honor to most people in other states.
Finally, Illinois is probably alleviating the migrant crisis in other states. With Illinois promising to resist the looming crackdown on immigration, states that don’t offer sanctuary likely are seeing some of their undocumented flee to Illinois.
Other states probably should be tempering their glee since Illinois has become a drag on the national economy. That was confirmed in a recent study by the state’s Commission on Governmental Forecasting and Accountability. It documented how Illinois is pulling down national averages on the key measures of performance – employment rates, GDP growth, nonfarm payrolls and personal income. All Americans pay a price for that.
And they are probably not aware that Illinois has become a “net taker” from the federal government. Historically, Illinois paid in far more taxes to Washington than Washington sent back or spent here. But that reversed about five years ago, according to the annual studies on that issue. Taxpayers around the nation send Illinois more than they get back.
But those matters are probably of little importance to centrists and conservatives outside of Illinois. Every day of the year, they’re probably saying, “Thanks, Santa, for the power, money, voters and help with migrants that you are sending via Illinois.”