Tyler

[Stuart Loren @StuLoren]

1) I know you guys like to question my expertise, as was the case when I testified to the Finance Committee. Probably a strategic miscalculation…

2) A careful reader would notice I'm deliberate with my data and words. I say “disincentivize” investment and jobs. Not “destroy”.

3) The article you cite fails to prove that a corporate head tax is harmless. There is not enough data to prove anything conclusively. That's because the sample size is too small. Why is that? Because most cities recognize a head tax is ultimately a tax on LABOR and not capital, and that it would undermine their economic competitiveness. Thus, they don't do it!

4) We don't live in the 1900s anymore. The economy has limited geographic friction - especially for a city like ours dominated by service sectors. We compete for investment, employers, talent, etc - and as I wrote in my Tribune piece yesterday, that is a competition we are losing.

Do you like any of the following:

A) Presiding over the last ranked city amongst the top-25 in the US for real GDP growth over the last 5 years?

B) Having an unemployment rate above the national average?

C) That our wage growth has trailed US wage growth by nearly 8% since 2020 and lags inflation by 10% over the same period (meaning that real spending power is down substantially)?

D) That local job growth has been 1% here since pre-pandemic?

Do you really think a head tax will spur the investment we need to turn any of that around?

If your goal is more revenue for city services then you need to ultimately expand the tax base! Not punish the existing one.

In a competitive economy, do you really think your head tax is conducive to attracting more investment to our city? I am shocked you guys can't connect dots A to B... It would be a huge red flag to development for the remainder of your term.

If you just want to stick it to corporations and the rich, please stop trying to crush only Chicago and run for federal office.

Companies and wealthier taxpayers can avoid city taxes by moving or choosing not to move into certain cities. You can't escape federal taxes. You are trying to solve for grievances you have about federal policy at the local level - that won't work. You will just cause us more pain.

5) As the WBEZ article even mentions, the closest (but imperfect) comparison to your proposed head tax is a payroll tax, and there the empirical studies do suggest a clear relationship between higher tax rates on labor and lower employment growth.

When you raise the per-worker cost of employing someone, employers don’t send you a thank-you note and hire more people. They hire fewer people, slower - especially at the margin.

The strongest pattern in the real-world evidence isn’t “mass layoffs tomorrow.” It’s fewer openings, fewer expansions, more substitution (e.g., contractors, outsourcing, automation), and more decisions to place the next role somewhere else. That’s exactly what I mean by “disincentivize.”

The WBEZ analysis was looking for net job losses; I am sounding the alarm about workers who will never get hired in the first place. That is the definition of a disincentive.

And yes, my friends - we indeed have data showing this dynamic in practice. Several notable studies:

- Johnston (2021, AEJ: Economic Policy): Using Florida administrative data, this study found that UI payroll tax hikes significantly reduce hiring and employment levels. The damage comes from hiring freezes, not just layoffs.

- Guo (2024, U.S. Census Bureau CES): Found that payroll tax increases reduce year-over-year employment growth by roughly 2.24 percentage points for every one percentage-point increase in the effective tax rate. The negative effects are strongest for young workers and single-location firms.*

*And yes, I realize WBEZ cited Professor Guo as questioning "causation" on job loss from the head tax and that "research on Chicago’s previous head tax isn’t conclusive enough to call the policy a job killer" - which, again, I am not doing. I am calling it a job disincentivizer.

- Guo & Wallskog (2025, Journal of Public Economics): Even “small” per-worker taxes deter entrepreneurs from becoming employers at all (elasticity of new employers ~ -0.11). It pushes survivors to substitute employees with contract labor to avoid the tax.

- Anderson & Meyer (1995, NBER 5201): Show that while payroll taxes may be largely borne by workers at the market-wide level, firms cannot fully pass within-market tax differences onto wages. Instead, employment reallocates away from higher-tax firms. (Today, that means jobs moving from Chicago to other cities.)

- Benzarti & Harju (2020, NBER 26640): In Finland, higher payroll taxes didn't just hurt jobs; they crushed investment. They estimate a -13.9% drop in total investment and a -18.0% drop in fixed-asset investment for exposed firms.

6) If you’re so confident that your proposed head tax will have *zero* effect on employment or investment, then stop hiding behind a headline and share your actual analysis. Because right now the posture is basically “Trust us bro.”

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

It’s really bad that managing the city’s $10B treasury is the job of an elected official who has 0 experience doing anything like it.

And lol at the below

[Max Burns @themaxburns]

One problem with fomenting political extremism is that the people you radicalize might not be the people you are trying to radicalize.

[Michael McLean @cornoisseur]

Incredible YIMBY propaganda in Edgewater

(Photo: https://t.co/crY9QuZTNO)

[Tyler @tpott]

@AldKnudsen43 @chicagobars

[Tyler @tpott]

@minc798 Any update on Uniqlo?

[Tyler @tpott]

@dl_spiegel @cswir @TheOnion I’m pretty sure it’s an unpaid board. Still a stupid appointment, though.

[Chicago Kid @chilandlord]

Hey..Chicago...actual policy that will result in lower housing costs...not your typically Chicago far leftist fu@kery I know...but actually effective outcomes here if it passes.

[Tyler @tpott]

There won’t BE any capital gains you stupid slut

[Chris @itsCblast]

🚨Trump: We're on track to fully eliminate capital gains tax in 2025

[Tracy Alloway @tracyalloway]

Weird that no one’s ever tried to spark a domestic manufacturing revival by destabilizing every single source of capital including private, public, domestic and international, before?

[Tyler @tpott]

This is what Broadway between Foster and Devon should look like.

[Polling USA @USA_Polling]

I'm 100% serious when I say blue states need to just start building apartment complexes en masse

[Midwest Antiquarian @Eric_Erins]

Prime example of why Illinois is such a strong Dem stronghold. Illinois republicans have no real talent or leadership. They barely even have a country club Republican sect. It’s devolved into a party of and for old cranks with no real policy ambitions. Just AM radio and Facebook

[Michael McLean @cornoisseur]

If you live in Chicago, please email the Plan Commission in support of the proposal to increase the housing capacity on Broadway by 18,000 new homes!

They are getting a lot of pushback from a small cohort of wealthy white homeowners. Defeat them!
[email protected]

[Tom @TPW60E]

Chicago is in very, very serious trouble with its current leadership. A mayor too incompetent to encourage growth and a slew of alderman on both the right and the left with far too much power to limit the minimal growth actually occurring.

[Jake Eaton @jkeatn]

HEY ITS ME your instagram friend from college who never left their community nonprofit job & thinks luigi mangione is hot. anyway heres some misinformation on wildfire insurance in california

[Molly @mollyfleck]

This is a good piece, but one thing I would add is that this difficulty in building housing contributes greatly to the city's financial woes. When we don't build, that's a lot of property tax income left out of the city's coffers.

[Chicago magazine @ChicagoMag]

Chicago desperately needs more housing. But when it comes to building apartments, the city is its own worst enemy. https://t.co/4vlIH2rBdA

[YIMBYLAND @YIMBYLAND]

This is a massive indictment of blue state cities.

You cannot call yourself a city who cares about the lower and middle class when you can’t even provide homes for them to live in. Instead, they actively prevent those homes from being built through webs of red-tape and zoning.

[Tom Cecil @scopgieb]

Wow. This could be big. Early turnout suggests Jill Stein is winning a massive share of voters who have set up GoFundMes to escape toxic roommate situations

[BeshearStan @BeshearStan]

Iowa according to Ann Selzer apparently