Although I avoid critiquing elected officials I can’t vote for or against, the editors of the Wall Street Journal do not observe such a restraint themselves. Their views on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are summed up pretty well in the first paragraph of a recent editorial:
There are bad ideas, really bad ideas, and then there is whatever Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is proposing next. His latest desire is a head tax on job creation in the city.
Even Gov. Pritzker opposes the tax:
The idea is so destructive that even Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker opposes it. He told the Economic Club of Chicago that the tax “penalizes the very thing that we want, which is we want more employment in the City of Chicago.” He added that the tax “makes it very hard to attract companies from outside of Chicago and harder for companies that are in Chicago to stay.”
Chicago doesn’t need less employment and it doesn’t need fewer big companies. What it could use fewer of is fewer independently taxing entities. It’s hard to give an exact number, a telling statement of itself, but I would estimate that the number of independently taxing entities levying taxes on Chicagoans is around 2,200.
