From Galesburg's Register-Mail.com: "The picture for the entire state is grim. The report finds that Illinois' poverty rate is the worst in the Midwest. The state lags behind the rest of the region on 15 key poverty indicators, including employment outlook, housing affordability and education spending.
'The state must re-evaluate why we continue to come in dead last in areas as critical as child poverty and offering decent paying jobs to Illinois residents,' said Sid Mohn, president of Heartland Alliance."
(emphasis mine)
When it comes to the problem of having few decent paying jobs, could it possibly be because Illinois has (a) unseemly taxes and incidental costs, both state and local (b) business-unfriendly laws downstate, (c) a badly-educated work force due to bad school management and union-teacher atrophy, and (d) a corrupt/inept government, from nearly top to bottom, making it difficult to reform anything?
Or, am I oversimplifying?
Illinois has all the materials we need to be the best and the brightest (to borrow from the early 1960s). We have raw materials like nobody's business, we have a capable and able-bodied people, we have top-notch educational centers like the University of Chicago where research is still ahead of the pack. We have open farmland and empty factories waiting to be properly utilized. Our transportation base includes the finest waterways, the most reliable freight railroads, and some darned fine highways (okay, I exaggerate a bit on the last one). Our climate is moderate to temperate, so it's not outrageously expensive to live here...
I know part of the reason Knox county is on the watch list this year is due to the closing of three major industries in as many years. But why did those businesses move out in the first place? Was it all because the labor unions wouldn't see eye to eye with management? Was it that some other state or country offered better tax incentives? Was there less paperwork to running a factory elsewhere? All of the above? None of the above? Some of the above?
And, what about Naomi?
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