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I lived in Chicago for 8 years. Here is my take on how it got so bad: 1) Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money and issuing de

I lived in Chicago for 8 years. Here is my take on how it got so bad: 1) Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money and issuing deferred payments, such as excessively generous retirement packages (instead of raises, which would have required additional taxes). 2) Now the bill is due. Large amounts of taxpayer dollars aren't actually being used to pay for police, libraries, and schools, but are instead paying off deferred expenses from decades ago. 3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately. I don't recommend anyone live in Chicago. I never want to go back. Every year I lived there I hated it more and more. It's a scary place. Now I live in Dallas. At first I hated Dallas, but every year I've been here I loved it more and more.

sgift 7y ago
> Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money Also known as "starve the beast", a proud strategy still proposed by many of the so called elites in charge of tax policy and their good, rich friends. Bad news: Those who profited from it are the same people who live 30 years longer. And with the low taxes they pay there's more than enough money left for bribing .. err I'm sorry .. completely legal lobbying to make sure this doesn't change.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Starve the beast is a republican policy to try and shrink government. Chicago's mayor has been a Democrat since 1931.
  - TehCorwiz 7y ago
    Aren't taxes are levied by the legislature?
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      Look up where the Madigans are from.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Both Chicago's and the state's legislature are overwhelmingly Democratic.
rolltiide 7y ago
What do you say about the people that love Chicago and swear by how much fun it is [in college and for happy hour] Just part of a privilege divide?
- jostmey 7y ago
  I was riding on an airplane back to Chicago after visiting Dallas. As the plane took off, the woman next to me started crying uncontrollably. Sometime before takeoff, she had just learned that her husband was murdered. I got the f_ck out of Chicago. I was robbed in Chicago twice, once successfully, once not. A person was murdered on my street corner, probably because the perpetrator thought they could get away with it because of the victims skin color and the way they looked. I would say to those college kids that they probably don't get out enough. Perhaps they live in a far northern suburb, removed from the problems of the city
  - taxidump 7y ago
    What part of the city did this happen in? The robbery part.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    By don’t get out enough you mean... don’t venture into dangerous neighborhoods?
  - vasilipupkin 7y ago
    these takes on Chicago are tiresome and false. Sure, there is crime in Chicago, but plenty of crime in SF or Oakland as well. The city is doing quite well, lots of new construction, new restaurants, 3% unemployment. The state has fiscal problems that will get resolved over time.
- sct202 7y ago
  A third of the city is very safe. The guy you're replying to went to U Chicago which is notoriously surrounded by not safe areas that are depopulating and falling alart and not dissimilar to what people think of as Detroit. Edit: For example our murder victims are predominantly male black and young. There are a lot of neighborhoods where the murder rate is crazy near 100 murders / 100,000 people per year and a bunch of neighborhoods with 0 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homicides-data-tracker-htmlstory.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homi...
antidaily 7y ago
I never felt unsafe living there for 7 years. But I lived in northside neighborhoods, worked in loop and Wicker Park.
moorhosj 7y ago
As someone who lives in Chicago, I would caution against taking the claims in this post as face value. This specific point is not true: >3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately. The demographics of the city are changing rapidly, anyone who lived here “years ago” and thinks they know about living here today is working with old data.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I honestly couldn't tell which one of you was being truthful? I thought maybe you were trying to make Chicago seem better than it is or maybe HN User "jostmey" was being a bit alarmist. Anyway, I had to google thee historical violent crime data myself. Turns out neither of you are being entirely honest. GP is definitely wrong when he asserts that crime has skyrocketed from "three decades ago". Would have been late 80s, early 90s and historical data says crime was much higher at that time. (Multiple times higher actually. So "jostmey" was not a little off, but way off on that assertion according to data.) And you're not being entirely honest when you say demographics have changed and imply that means a change in crime rates. At least, the rate of decrease of violent crime has gone nowhere over the past 30 years or so. It's decreasing at the same rate today, as it was in 2009, and in 1999. Meanwhile, demographic rate of change was near constant until it ratcheted up around 2008 apparently. (And then only in downtown, and only in the income dimension. Not racially.) So, following your implication, the rate of decline in, say, violent crime, should have ratcheted up around that time as well. The really interesting thing though is that even if I had validated either of your assertions in the data, neither of your explanations shed much light on plausible reasons for the disparity the article mentions. It's like you two just took your preferred world views and started arguing with each other without regard to what the data actually stated, or even what the original question actually was. I mean, OK, we get it. You like Chicago. Fine. Just say that and leave it at that, don't try to snow us. Same with "jostmey". We get it. You don't like Chicago. Just say that and leave it there. Why try to blow smoke up our collective rears?
  - moorhosj 7y ago
    According to Census ACS from 2017, the city went from 35% Black in 2010 to 30.5% in 2017. That is a pretty rapid shift in under s decade. Hard numbers fell from 930k to 830k. Most of the population loss is concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods. There are also plenty of South Side neighborhoods that are doing quite well (Hyde Park, Beverly, Mt Greenwood, Kenwood, Woodlawn, McKinley Park, Chinatown, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Garfield Ridge, and a few more). Those places don’t get the news coverage so everyone lumps an entire 1/3 of the city into “dump”. ==https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
merpnderp 7y ago
I’ve never heard of Detroit as being a low tax city. In fact a quick google found a couple of lists showing it to be the second highest taxed big city in the country. And didn’t the last city tax increase get voted down because economists consulted said a tax hike would actually lower revenue, with the reason given that high tax payers would just move?
dredmorbius 7y ago
Consider the city which was moments from declaring bankruptcy in 1975, and was similarly seen as in free-fall: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-york-at-the-brink-of-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-yo...

sgift 7y ago

> Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money Also known as "starve the beast", a proud strategy still proposed by many of the so called elites in charge of tax policy and their good, rich friends. Bad news: Those who profited from it are the same people who live 30 years longer. And with the low taxes they pay there's more than enough money left for bribing .. err I'm sorry .. completely legal lobbying to make sure this doesn't change.

rayiner 7y ago
Starve the beast is a republican policy to try and shrink government. Chicago's mayor has been a Democrat since 1931.
- TehCorwiz 7y ago
  Aren't taxes are levied by the legislature?
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Look up where the Madigans are from.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Both Chicago's and the state's legislature are overwhelmingly Democratic.

rolltiide 7y ago

What do you say about the people that love Chicago and swear by how much fun it is [in college and for happy hour] Just part of a privilege divide?

jostmey 7y ago
I was riding on an airplane back to Chicago after visiting Dallas. As the plane took off, the woman next to me started crying uncontrollably. Sometime before takeoff, she had just learned that her husband was murdered. I got the f_ck out of Chicago. I was robbed in Chicago twice, once successfully, once not. A person was murdered on my street corner, probably because the perpetrator thought they could get away with it because of the victims skin color and the way they looked. I would say to those college kids that they probably don't get out enough. Perhaps they live in a far northern suburb, removed from the problems of the city
- taxidump 7y ago
  What part of the city did this happen in? The robbery part.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  By don’t get out enough you mean... don’t venture into dangerous neighborhoods?
- vasilipupkin 7y ago
  these takes on Chicago are tiresome and false. Sure, there is crime in Chicago, but plenty of crime in SF or Oakland as well. The city is doing quite well, lots of new construction, new restaurants, 3% unemployment. The state has fiscal problems that will get resolved over time.
sct202 7y ago
A third of the city is very safe. The guy you're replying to went to U Chicago which is notoriously surrounded by not safe areas that are depopulating and falling alart and not dissimilar to what people think of as Detroit. Edit: For example our murder victims are predominantly male black and young. There are a lot of neighborhoods where the murder rate is crazy near 100 murders / 100,000 people per year and a bunch of neighborhoods with 0 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homicides-data-tracker-htmlstory.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homi...

antidaily 7y ago

I never felt unsafe living there for 7 years. But I lived in northside neighborhoods, worked in loop and Wicker Park.

moorhosj 7y ago

As someone who lives in Chicago, I would caution against taking the claims in this post as face value. This specific point is not true: >3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately. The demographics of the city are changing rapidly, anyone who lived here “years ago” and thinks they know about living here today is working with old data.

bilbo0s 7y ago
I honestly couldn't tell which one of you was being truthful? I thought maybe you were trying to make Chicago seem better than it is or maybe HN User "jostmey" was being a bit alarmist. Anyway, I had to google thee historical violent crime data myself. Turns out neither of you are being entirely honest. GP is definitely wrong when he asserts that crime has skyrocketed from "three decades ago". Would have been late 80s, early 90s and historical data says crime was much higher at that time. (Multiple times higher actually. So "jostmey" was not a little off, but way off on that assertion according to data.) And you're not being entirely honest when you say demographics have changed and imply that means a change in crime rates. At least, the rate of decrease of violent crime has gone nowhere over the past 30 years or so. It's decreasing at the same rate today, as it was in 2009, and in 1999. Meanwhile, demographic rate of change was near constant until it ratcheted up around 2008 apparently. (And then only in downtown, and only in the income dimension. Not racially.) So, following your implication, the rate of decline in, say, violent crime, should have ratcheted up around that time as well. The really interesting thing though is that even if I had validated either of your assertions in the data, neither of your explanations shed much light on plausible reasons for the disparity the article mentions. It's like you two just took your preferred world views and started arguing with each other without regard to what the data actually stated, or even what the original question actually was. I mean, OK, we get it. You like Chicago. Fine. Just say that and leave it at that, don't try to snow us. Same with "jostmey". We get it. You don't like Chicago. Just say that and leave it there. Why try to blow smoke up our collective rears?
- moorhosj 7y ago
  According to Census ACS from 2017, the city went from 35% Black in 2010 to 30.5% in 2017. That is a pretty rapid shift in under s decade. Hard numbers fell from 930k to 830k. Most of the population loss is concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods. There are also plenty of South Side neighborhoods that are doing quite well (Hyde Park, Beverly, Mt Greenwood, Kenwood, Woodlawn, McKinley Park, Chinatown, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Garfield Ridge, and a few more). Those places don’t get the news coverage so everyone lumps an entire 1/3 of the city into “dump”. ==https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...

merpnderp 7y ago

I’ve never heard of Detroit as being a low tax city. In fact a quick google found a couple of lists showing it to be the second highest taxed big city in the country. And didn’t the last city tax increase get voted down because economists consulted said a tax hike would actually lower revenue, with the reason given that high tax payers would just move?

dredmorbius 7y ago

Consider the city which was moments from declaring bankruptcy in 1975, and was similarly seen as in free-fall: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-york-at-the-brink-of-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-yo...