How many times have I told you that taxes influence behavior?  People want to keep more of what they earn.  It’s as simple as that.  So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out ..

Since the official start of the “recovery,” Illinois employers were moderately adding jobs for months.  That all stopped in January 2011.  Since January, Illinois started losing jobs.  Big time.  In fact, in July 2011, Illinois lost more jobs than any other state in the nation.  It lost 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July as its unemployment rate climbed for the third straight month to 9.5%.

So Illinois was steadily adding jobs and then .. bam! .. it is losing more jobs than any other state in the nation.  What happened?

Tax increases.

In early January, a Democrat legislature along with a Democrat governor passed a 67% personal income tax increase along with a 46% hike on corporate tax rates.  At the time the governor’s office estimated that the higher taxes would generate about $6.8 billion a year.  I’m curious to see, but my guess is that Illinois will not see an increase in its tax receipts of $6.8 billion this year.  This is because these Democrats were too focused on punishing wealth and the achievers rather than growing the size of the economic pie.  Now they have fewer taxpayers paying into the system and more people drawing from the system in the form of unemployment benefits. 

Aren’t Democrat tax policies inspiring?  I sure do hope that Obama looks to his own state of Illinois for guidance on how best to create jobs and grow the economy .. don’t you?