Voluntarist
Member

I'm down state, across the stream from St. Louis and right next door to Belleville (where the woman mentioned in the article lives). Big businesses are the only businesses that could reasonably be expected to leave the state since medium and small businesses tend to be tied to the local economy. And most big businesses already offer vacation and/or sick leave - so they'll just replace that with PTO, just like the medium and small businesses that offer vacation and/or sick leave. Who this will hurt is the medium and small businesses that don't already offer vacation/sick leave. Those won't have the option of leaving the state, so will have to either pass the costs along to their customers or else go out of business. So, I don't see this particular measure causing business to leave the state. However, Illinois is and has been very unfriendly to business over recent decades; and it's taking a toll. Six big companies moved their corporate headquarters out of the state in 2022 (Tyson Foods, Citadel, Boeing, Caterpillar, FTX and Highland Ventures). Caterpillar hasn't moved any blue-collar jobs as yet, but they're not expanding in the state (choosing other states instead). Chicago was the location for most corporate HQs, but it was difficult to recruit executives to live in Chicago, due primarily to crime. As per AARP, Illinois income tax is a flat 4.5% (which is higher that neighboring Indiana's 3.15%, but lower than Missouri's graduated tax which tops out at 4.95% and hits most workers). Average sales tax rate is 8.82%. The property tax is outrageous at about 2.08% of assessed value - only New Jersey and parts of Connecticut are higher. The median-priced home will have you paying about $5K a year in property taxes. Illinois may have the nation's worst public pension problem:

Done! Biden issues order to strengthen gun background checks

What liberals don't get about Trump voters:

Mother of two self-identifies as childless Mom Accused of Leaving Kids Alone for 7 Weeks Flashes Smile During Arrest

I'm waiting for Billy Crystal to do a skit on it on SNL; it's only a matter of time.

Trigger Warnings

I've been expecting to see the following posted here for the last week or so, but it hasn't been - so this seems like an appropriate thread to post it in. It shows one of the practical problems with reparations: should a black person with slave-owning ancestors be eligible to receive reparations? Note that Angela Davis is a reparations advocate. Black Panther communist Angela Davis - who teaches that U.S. was built by racist colonizers - faces calls to pay reparations after genealogy show reveals her white puritan ancestor arrived in America on the Mayflower

Unless it's climate science

I really wish they would sue, because I suspect it would spur several more South Park episodes about the Markle's. However, a spokesperson for the Markle's reports:

I'd suggest changing "denier" in the title, to "dissenter"; because it is a significant difference. Koonin isn't a climate change denier; he probably falls into the classification of "Luke Warmist". He doesn't deny that the Earth is warming, nor that human activity is accelerating the process. What he does dispute is the alarmism of impending disaster and what the most appropriate and realistic response to the warming should be. Koonin is no lightweight. He studied physics under Richard Feynman at CalTech - which is where he received his undergraduate degree. He received his doctorate from MIT. He then became a professor of theoretical physics at CalTech; where he later served as vice president and provost. His book, Unsettled, just hits the mark. I bought it to get an overview of the more modern climate models - which it provides (though I wish it was more in depth on those - but that would have exceeded the comprehension of the target audience it was intended for). The rest of the book is simply methodical in its approach.

Proclamation 4771--Registration Under the Military Selective Service Act