And their pension fund is already in big trouble. Guess they figure the taxpayers in other states will be forced to help them once they go bankrupt.
Just curious, does anyone have an example of a government job that increases the “Gross National Capital”, ie, creating actual wealth?
This is why the entire state of Illinois may have to undergo a Chapter 9 bankruptcy to clean up that mess. Which is too bad because the Chicago area is arguably the biggest transportation hub in central USA besides Kansas City, MO and St. Louis, MO.
No. This is a good thing. If all workers become government workers, they all will have high pay, long vacations and great pensions!!! Just put all workers on the government payroll and the state’s problems will be solved!!
Where’s our FRiend when you need him?
The question was: why is Illinois broke?
Sorry, this is a red herring. Illinois is actually well below the national average on the government employee to manufacturing employee ratio. According to the figures in the article, this ratio for Illinois was about 1.3 in June 2015 (746,700/574,200). According to BLS data accessed on the St. Louis FED’s website, the comparable ratio of state and local government employees to manufacturing employees for the U.S. as a whole in August 2015 (latest available data) was 1.495 (18,435,000/12,329,000). By the way, manufacturing employment in the U.S. peaked at 19,553,000 in June, 1979 and has declined by a third since then, even as the U.S. population as a whole has grown substantially. If you are looking for a culprit to blame for the rise of government employment relative to manufacturing, you should focus on globalization, outsourcing and the rise of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and other countries with wages that are low relative to ours, and the impact that has had on manufacturing employment here. This is a private sector story, not a government story.