Rebecca Madigan takes a comprehensive look at the self-inflicted problems that Democrats have caused.
While her analysis is quite comprehensive, Gov Jim Thompson’s demographer gave the same signal in his report on the 1980 Census.
The Governor’s office would not let it be published without major revision.
The demographer wrote that Chicago was a lost cause and the challenge in the future was to keep the rest of the state from following in Chicago’s footsteps.
And from Chicago Magazine comes this conclusion that Chicago’s downfall started in the 1970’s (prior to the 1980 Census):
For Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago, the city’s debt problem all comes down to shrinkage. “Chicago’s infrastructure was built to serve a population that was, at one time, [a third] larger than it is now,” he says. And with those fleeing Chicagoans goes precious tax revenue, which means the city is forced to take on debt to keep potholes filled and trains running (kind of) on time (for the most part). “It creates this long-term structural imbalance, which is what we’ve been living with since about the mid-’70s.”
