Illinois' Bold New Proposal To Tax Itself Further Into Debt
If there's one thing Illinois knows to do with money, it's not knowing at all what to do with money. To give you an idea just how broke Illinois is as a state, just last year - and I am not making this up - lawmakers had no choice but to accept the somber burden of authorizing a massive pay raise for themselves. It was quite a sacrifice, I know, and one for which I'm sure Illinois residence will feel forever indebted.
I don't want to say Illinois is the poorest state in the nation. I mean, it hasn't reached the same critical financial juncture as Michigan, which is currently working hard to convince its remaining residents that the lead and raw sewage being pumped through their water supply is wholesome and nutritious. Illinois isn't Wisconsin or Kansas, whose Republican governors tried, as an alternative to taxation, to fund their states entirely on magic pixie farts. Apparently. It's not like Illinois is New Jersey.
Illinois is ranked one of the lowest states in education, so supposably we has got that going for us. Illinois was also the third highest ranking state people moved away from in 2015, according to an annual movers study conducted by United Van Lines. To put this into perspective, only New York and New Jersey (obviously) ranked higher, and I can poke fun at New Jersey because, statistically speaking, there are people out there leaving the vile, desolate hellscape of New Jersey for the bold, promising hellscape of Illinois.
To put this even further into perspective, Michigan - a state whose governor is currently using taxpayer money to buy his defense in a lawsuit over knowingly poisoning the taxpayers - did not even rank in the top ten. This means, again statistically, people would prefer drinking yellow-brown tap water infused with lead than live in Illinois. Of course, this could also be the lead affecting them. One of the dangerous properties of lead is it can neurologically damage those who are exposed to it, making them prone to all sorts of unsound judgments, like staying in a state despite the government making them pay to be allowed to drink lead.
Interesting historical fact you probably won't learn in Illinois: Consuming lead is among the leading causes of the fall of most empires throughout history.
Recently my fiancé and I had to take a short road trip to Madison, Wisconsin. The top choice of route guidance took us through Iowa and across Wisconsin instead of just going straight through Illinois. That's right; not even Google Maps wants us to drive through Illinois to get to the state directly above Illinois, even if we are starting the journey by already living in Illinois.
You might be asking why I continue to live in Illinois, if Illinois is such a terrible place to live, to which I can give you an easy and indisputable answer: Because. Asking anyone why they live where they live is a stupid question generally met with blank stares and stammering jaw movements because no one knows why they live where they live. It's not a thing people think much about. If they did, they would almost invariably move immediately because people tend to think every place is better than the place they are despite the objective reality that every place sucks.
If I had to venture a guess why Illinois ranks amongst the poorest states in the nation, I would primarily attribute our almost uncanny ability to elect purely incompetent people to run our state, followed closely by our similarly uncanny ability to elect criminals. Sometimes, in the case of our second-to-last governor, Rod Blagojevich (pronounced "Rod Blagojevich"), we even manage to elect people who are incompetent at being criminals. Other times a wholly unfortunate assortment of candidates will resign us to electing the criminally incompetent, like Pat Quinn, whose platform of perpetual tax increases and continuous budget shortfalls only took a brief six years to fail to impress Illinois voters.
Now Illinois is faced with a budget impasse so consequential Illinois lawmakers may be faced with doing the unthinkable. They may have to cut their own pay until the budget crisis gets resolved. This is quite possibly the most tragic development to emerge from the budget crisis yet, hitting hardest those who deserve it most. The current governor, Bruce Rauner - whose name is pronounced like you're talking through a yawn - has a proposal to cut the pensions promised to state workers since there's no money left in the state pension fund anyway because Illinois lawmakers used the state pension fund to pay for other projects, such as their own private investments, because those other projects had been drained to pay for other projects, namely their other private investments.
However, one plucky and industrious Senator by the name of John Cullerton, whose future plans must include losing the next election, recently proposed a radical new idea for a revenue source - taxing drivers per mile driven instead of per gallon of gas. This was met with all the wringing of hands you'd expect from corrupt Illinois lawmakers, and all the gnashing of teeth you'd expect from outraged Illinois residents who will ultimately roll their eyes and accept their inescapable new reality. "At least they're not making us drink the gasoline!" we'll say. "Yet!"
Illinois drivers would be given the option to install a device in their vehicle which would record the number of miles they drive. One can only speculate what manufacturers might call such an innovative device. I'm thinking "odometer" (from the Greek "Odo," meaning "a character on 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,'" and the British "meter," meaning "the British word for 'foot'"), but that's just me. Perhaps if this revolutionary advancement of technology were to be installed in the dashboard, consumers could one day use it to gauge the overall wear on a vehicle. NOW I'M JUST BEING SILLY.
In all fairness, Illinois does (probably) already know what an odometer is. I was just doing what we in the humor business like to call "joshing," which means "acting like Josh." This secondary odometer will do more than your factory installed, one-trick odometer. This odometer will not only track your mileage and lie about your mileage, it will also use GPS triangulation to adjust your tax rates based on factors completely beyond your control, such as the location of your destination, the amount of traffic congestion, the amount of road construction, probably the weather, the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Japan, the alignment of the constellations, solar flares, FEMA camps, the rising and falling of the tides, the age, weight, height, highest education level, and voting record of the driver and each passenger, the number of Justin Bieber songs on the radio divided by the number of Glenn Danzig songs not on the radio while the vehicle is in operation, the President's approval rating, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. It will compile all of this information into a complex formula and compute a value to be transmitted to the state's department of revenue to get assigned a completely random dollar amount because that's how taxes work.
Illinois drivers will reportedly be given a second option if they feel the GPS-based random number generator is too invasive to the privacy Americans still think they have. They can opt to be taxed at a flat rate of 1.5 cents per mile on a base of 30,000 miles driven per year, which doesn't seem like a high estimate at all so long as most people in Illinois plan to drive to California and back roughly twelve times each calendar year.
I'm sure there are some people, such as delivery drivers, couriers, or drug dealers, whose livelihoods largely depend on continuous driving. For these people this might seem like a worthwhile, money-saving option, but me, personally, I don't drive anywhere near 30,000 miles per year. I'm lucky if I break 10,000, and since I live in a border town a lot of those are out of the state, for which I'm sure their GPS-based odometer will be set up to tax at a double rate because how dare I. HOW. DARE. I.
Once you consider most cars get anywhere from 15 to 30 miles per gallon of gas, and depending on where they live, Illinois drivers are currently taxed anywhere from 30 to 65 cents per gallon, you might reach the same conclusion as the overwhelming majority of Illinois residents who voiced their objection over the Internet - this involves A LOT of math. Anybody who has spent enough time in or reading about Illinois knows not to trust anything involving math, money, and Illinois lawmakers because the system is not set up to save its taxpayers money. The State of Illinois needs all of the money it can get so it can someday, with careful and responsible fiscal planning, a little determination, and a lot of luck, somehow pull itself even further into debt.