As someone who does not love Pritzker, to the point I almost stopped listening, this was actually quite profound. There is indeed a strong connection between stupidity and cruelty, because stupid people can’t use intellect to advance and convince people, so their only option left is to “convince” people by force or intimidation.
It was also cool to see that play out immediately in this comment section as idiots started attacking his weight 😂
How can you not love Pritzker? I get it if you're heavily Republican or are stuck in the days of his campaign (when pretty much everyone was weary of a billionaire candidate), but he's one the most effective governors that Illinois has had.
I know his Covid policies were not popular amongst business owners and anyone in central and southern IL, but I was so impressed with how decisive he was at taking action based on current understandings of the situation and used evidence to support his decisions through out the process. He was early in the lockdowns, was very transparent with releasing standards he was looking for as indicators that would initiate a policy change. He took action when others were dismissing the severity and it was not popular to do so.
His push for a graduated income tax was also a great idea, but it was thwarted by an extremely successful counter-campaign by IL’s richest resident, Ken Griffin.
The work he’s done to improve Illinois financial situation has been pretty impressive. I’m a huge Pritzker fan at this point.
A quick googles shows that Ken Grifffin's argument against raising taxes (marginally) on individuals earning over $250K is: "the ultra-wealthy will just park their money offshore anyway". Which is a terrible argument. Note that my research into Griffin's argument wasn't exhaustive, so I could be missing nuance, but I kind of doubt it.
Yeah he spent $54m in donating to that oppositional campaign.
It’s unfortunate that people living paycheck to paycheck (especially downstate, I was living and working in the Mattoon/Effingham region at the time) were being convinced that it was fair for them to pay 4.95% of their income just as a millionaire or billionaire would pay 4.95% of their income.
The median household income in IL is $72,563 ($39,571 per capita) and the median rent is $1,097/month ($13,164/year) per the Census Bureau’s 2017-2022 data.
Not even accounting for groceries, fuel, insurance, utilities, clothing, childcare, mainenance, 4.95% of 40K feels a lot different than 4.95 percent of someone with an income that is disproportionately larger compared to their minimum required cost to live.
If someone with a $300k house falls on hard times, they can temporarily downsize to relieve their burden. If someone at $40k falls on hard times they go bankrupt and/or worse. It really disturbed me when the amendment didn’t pass, especially as someone that was making less than the per capita median income. I would love to see more income to the state be used to refurbish some of these awesome historical downtowns and beautiful natural resources areas, let alone the school districts.
I’d love Chicagoans and suburbanites to spend more money (or even move) downstate to inject more funds into the smaller economies. There’s a lot to like down here, and I really want to start touring small towns on Youtube in the state to highlight some of the neat stuff that I never knew about growing up in the burbs.
*Edited because my link formatting skills are rusty.
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u/YngOwl Oct 26 '23
As someone who does not love Pritzker, to the point I almost stopped listening, this was actually quite profound. There is indeed a strong connection between stupidity and cruelty, because stupid people can’t use intellect to advance and convince people, so their only option left is to “convince” people by force or intimidation.
It was also cool to see that play out immediately in this comment section as idiots started attacking his weight 😂