There is only so much tax you can squeeze out of derelict old factories and crumbly old rail roads. Most of the real commerce around Chicago has already moved out to the loops and to points south. What they will do instead is raise the income tax, the sales tax, and various excise taxes. Just be grateful the founders were wise enough to deny state governments the right to coin money. If only they had done the same for the federal government.
Just be grateful the founders were wise enough to deny state governments the right to coin money.
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Oh my gosh, what a mess that would be. I can imagine the California or Illinois dollar would be worth about 10¢ in Texas money.
That provision of the constitution was the work of Connecticut's Roger Sherman who served as the very first Mayor of New Haven until his death. Connecticut in the years after the revolution refused to issue essentially worthless paper "money" known as "revolutionary war scrip" in response to demands by veterans of the revolutionary army to be paid pensions to relieve them of the distasteful necessity of, well, working to support themselves. These demands were by no means limited to those disabled by war but were demands that ALL veterans be generously supported for life just for being veterans.
Connecticut was surrounded by states or commonwealths that issued the worthless scrip: the State of New York, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and most particularly the Commonwealth of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Of these the most profligate was Rhode Island which, when merchants refused to accept scrip in payment of debts or for goods or services, passed ever more draconian "legal tender laws" by which, if the veteran offered scrip in payment and it was refused, the debt was deemed paid. The merchants and creditors fled Rhode Island to avoid their debtors (typically to Connecticut). Rhode Island then enacted laws allowing payment in scrip to be made to trust accounts held by court clerks and, if merchants or creditors refused to pick up the scrip from the courts by a deadline, the scrip would be returned to the veteran and the debt deemed paid in full. This is the origin of the disreputable "legal tender" language on our greenies.
Roger Sherman, as an honest man, was not amused by the Rhode Island fiscal follies and saw to it that Article I, Section 10 as to coining money resulted. What he could not do was keep future political scum honest.
Roger Sherman was also one of the five members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and a signer thereof, a signer of the Constitution and of the previous Articles of Confederation and Articles of Association. Roger Sherman, now somewhat forgotten, was a very consequential Founding Father.
Today, Illinois, Connecticut, New York and California (and perhaps other states like New Jersey?) are probably at a point where the federal bankrupting of their public employee pensions may be absolutely necessary. That will require substantial changes to federal bankruptcy law to allow state bankruptcies. The changes should be temporary and should require tight-fisted PERMANENT state constitutional pension reform as a condition of filing for state bankruptcy. This must NOT become a way of life for profligate state politicians.
The very idea of state employee pensions taking precedence over ALL other state expenditures is an unspeakable obscenity. No state troopers? Throw the destitute elderly out of nursing homes? Close the state courts? Close all gummint skewels abandoning increasingly feral yutes to idle in the streets, alley ways and mugging fields? Extrapolate as far as your imagination will carry you. Welcome to Clockwork Orange World.
At that point, armed revolution and a LOT of bloodshed would be the only way out. Most people are already quite pissed off at government policies. Wait until they lose their respective favorite programs AND see what they are expected to pay for public employee pensions.
Meanwhile, consider the utterly bloated federal debt and the absolute impossibility of EVER paying the creditors who hold the debt. Our state and national fiscal fairylands are rapidly approaching the necessary end. LOOK OUT BELOW!!!!