Answer to population loss: lower taxes

Illinois residents are witnessing a drop in population. It was reported recently that Illinois' largest city saw a drop of almost 20,000 people.

According to U.S. Census figures, Chicago has lost 10 percent of its population every 10 years for the past 40 years. An ominous trend indeed.

There are a lot of reasons but one can't miss the correlation between who's been running Illinois' approximately seven thousand governments, the most governments of any state, and the unending loss of people.

Nobody likes having to confront low numbers, except golfers, who happen to like low numbers. But in everything else it's big numbers that we are striving for.

In education we want high grades, in business we want high sales, in government they want more money. In order to achieve higher numbers each segment goes about it the same way, except government. To get higher grades we must study better, harder and longer. To get higher sales businesses must work longer, harder and smarter. In order to get more money government thinks the answer is just raise taxes. See the problem?

Raising taxes drives people and businesses to move to other states where taxes are lower. Lower taxes attract more businesses and more businesses attract more people and more people need to send their kids to school.

If we do the numbers, our current path has produced a noticeably downward trend in population.

How about something new.

Mike Simon

Glen Ellyn