Flight

Tribune editorial board member Kristen McQueary remarks on the departure of people with the means to do so from Illinois:

Pritzker and a Democrat-led House and Senate plan to introduce a graduated income tax proposal that would, at least initially, hit upper-income earners in Illinois. Candidates for Chicago mayor, including Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, have proposed a new tax on million-dollar property transactions. Aldermanic candidates, including Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, have floated the idea of a separate city income tax for wealthy Chicagoans. And mayoral candidate Bill Daley is open to a tax on commuters who live outside the city but work in Chicago.

Reality check: The number of residents fleeing Illinois for other states jumped to 93,704 in 2014 from 68,204 the previous year. It increased in 2015 to 106,544, and in 2016 to 109,941. More exodus in 2017 of 114,779 and last year, another 114,154.

Who do you think is leaving Illinois? For the most part, it’s people who have the means to do so.

Which brings us to the broader problem: How did we get to a place where wealth, success and entrepreneurship are shame-worthy? And where giving back by these same individuals is largely ignored?

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts often becomes folly for the income-equality crowd. Yes, he’s a rich guy. Yet due to his generosity, thousands of kids on the South Side can enjoy a new indoor sports center in Pullman. Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, who knows the value of kids playing sports, reached out to Ricketts to invest in the struggling Pullman neighborhood. Ricketts enlisted Cubs Charities to donate $500,000 to the Pullman Community Center, a state-of-the-art indoor recreational complex that opened in November in Beale’s ward. Other sponsors stepped up too.

This is just one of many, many examples of high-income earners giving back. You don’t hear about it enough, though.

“I am more interested in what’s in your heart than your wallet,” Beale said of his efforts to raise private money for the center. “I believe this was in (Ricketts’) heart. He wants the Cubs to be a Chicago team, not just a North Side team.”

Left-leaning politicians bash people like Ricketts and want to tax them more to solve budget problems. But remember: Ricketts didn’t vote on those unbalanced budgets, year after year. He didn’t accumulate mountains of debt. He didn’t vote to underfund worker pensions. He didn’t vote to borrow more money instead of cut spending.

The Democrats in Chicago and Springfield did that. So when you hear the wealth-bashing, make no mistake who’s really responsible for the budget mess we’re in. It isn’t the Ricketts family.

In fairness I don’t think that Gov. Pritzker, Board President Preckwinkle, or Ald. Dowell actually think that wealth, success, or entrepeneurship are shameworthy. They have big plans, they need money to realize them, and, well, they want to tax the rich for precisely the same reason that Willie Sutton is said to have robbed banks: it’s where the money is. That a declining population, particularly a declining population of the rich, means it will be that much more difficult for the hardy few or us who remain to fund their dreams or even service the debt they’re incurring does not seem to occur to them or, if it does occur to them, to matter.