By: Diane Benjamin

If you aren’t a subscriber to their emails, you should be:  Subscribe here  Last week the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released its seminal, annual Rich States, Poor States report, which ranks all 50 states on their economic competitiveness using metrics like total tax burden, labor laws and the cost of debt service. Open the Books did a complimentary analysis, digging into county-level statistics.We usually measure migration by counting how many people leave. But that’s only part of the picture. When people move, they don’t just relocate, they take their income, spending power, and economic impact with them. A survey of 2,315 counties using data published by the IRS demonstrates billions of dollars of dollars in adjusted gross income (AGI) have been leaving counties that house major urban centers.

Cook County is losing a lot of taxable income!

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How does McLean County compare?

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McLean County is losing Adjusted Gross Income because people with higher incomes are leaving. Taxing people to death creates outmigration. Voting matters, voting for the wrong people matters even more.

This is a link to search County data: https://openthebooks.streamlit.app/IRS_Migration_Data_by_County?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

It’s not very user friendly. The entire email has a lot more information. Get on their email list!