Look at Chicago, getting choked by the pension costs and debt service....just like virtually all democratic run cities in the USA.There's no question that Chicago's pensions are way underfunded - its four unions have funding ratios ranging from just 21% to 46%, according to this
2022 WTTW (Chicago PBS) report. That's close to, if not at, the bottom of the pack. A
2019 Pew Research Center Report specifically called out Chicago for it low and rapidly declining funding ratio.
And that's the point. It's dangerous to draw inferences from a single data point, especially from an outlier. Instead, use broader data. Here's a
2023 report from the conservative think tank (
per Crain's) Truth In Accounting. It presents 2021 debt (or surplus) per taxpayer for the 7
5 largest US cities, including pension liabilities. 2
5 cities have surpluses,
50 are in debt.
Ballotpedia reports that in 2020, of the mayors in the 100 largest cities, 64% were Democrats, 29% were Republicans, and 7% were nonpartisan. That's almost exactly in line with the breakdown of the 2
5 cities reported to have surpluses: 16 Democrats (64%), 8 Republicans (32%), and 1 nonpartisan (4%). Republicans don't seem to have done a better (or worse) job than Democrats in managing city budgets,
once one controls for percentage representation.
this is what some people in a very low percentage of counties who vote for govt handouts want, not the huge majority of counties in the USATake care not to conflate people and counties. Otherwise one might wind up thinking that Illinois is a deep red state.
Then there's Los Angeles County. Just one of
58 counties in California, yet 2
5% of the state's people live there. One can have a majority of people in a minority, even a small minority of counties. What counts, or what should count, are the people, not the land.
