Every April, families across Illinois sit down at their tables to handle their taxes. Taxes are how we pay for the things our kids and neighbors need — such as our local schools, fixed roads and the health care that keeps our families going.
But this Tax Day is a tough reminder that the system is feeling more and more lopsided. While we’re doing our part, a lot of the wealth is being pushed straight to the top.
Between the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and other tax shifts, billionaires and massive corporations are getting huge breaks while the rest of us are left wondering where the support for our communities went. To give you an idea of the gap:
• The top 0.1% could see an average tax benefit of well over $100,000.
• Permanent corporate tax cuts are expected to cost the public billions of dollars over the next 10 years.
• OBBBA changes put health care for millions of people at risk and pull the plug on billions meant for local clean-energy projects.
It’s hard to watch our resources get stretched thin while the wealthiest are handed these “beautiful” deals. When the biggest corporations pay less, our neighborhoods end up paying the price.
The good news is that we don’t have to just accept this. Here in Illinois, we can push for a fairer way of doing things:
• Closing loopholes: We can make sure giant corporations aren’t using offshore tricks to avoid paying what they owe.
• Taxing extreme wealth: We can ensure billionaires contribute fairly, just like any of us who earn a paycheck.
• Holding Big Tech accountable: We can make sure massive tech companies that profit off our information actually give back to our state.
We all play by the rules and pay our taxes every year because we care about our community. It’s only fair to expect billionaires and multinational corporations to do the same. We deserve a system that invests in all of us, not just the people at the very top.
— Dominique Robitson, Chicago
Mayor’s focus on ‘fair’
Mayor Brandon Johnson has a governing philosophy, and it can be summarized in one word: “fair.” Fair share. Fair wage. Fair contract. Fair treatment. If fairness were a currency, our mayor would be the richest person in Illinois — which is ironic, given how much he’d like to tax the rich.
Even before taking office, the mayor pledged to “make the suburbs, airlines & ultra-rich pay their fair share.” Once elected, that theme only intensified. Celebrating the minimum wage ordinance, the mayor declared that “everyone gets to earn a fair wage” in Chicago. He stood with health care workers fighting for a “fair contract.”
Then there are our Bears. As the team flirts with Indiana and Arlington Heights, Johnson has insisted that the city won’t take “a back seat” — framing the whole ordeal less as a complex economic negotiation and more as a slight that needs to be remedied. The underlying message: Chicago isn’t being treated fairly. Somebody should do something.
The problem is that “fair” is the vocabulary of the aggrieved, not the visionary. If my kids when they were young didn’t like what was happening to them, they immediately cried out about how unfair they were being treated. I expect more from our civic leaders.
Great mayors don’t stomp their feet about fairness — they build coalitions, craft compelling deals and give people a reason to say yes. Johnson’s instinct, time and again, is to frame every setback as an injustice rather than a problem to be solved.
Don’t the citizens of Chicago deserve a mayor with a bigger word?
— Dean Gerber, Chicago
Car-free life in Chicago
I recently attended the Wicker Park Committee meeting about the proposed redevelopment of a strip mall on Milwaukee Avenue near the Damen Blue Line that would add much-needed housing to the area. Many of my neighbors there weren’t enthusiastic; they objected to the building’s height — about seven stories — and to a recent design revision that replaced parking garage space with additional housing units. Speaker after speaker lamented that the development would bring traffic, congestion, parking competition and misery to the neighborhood.
But beneath every objection to this development was the same mistaken assumption: that more housing automatically means more cars.
That development’s location next to the Blue Line is not some accident. When we build housing near a train, with less parking and more homes, we encourage a different kind of resident to move in: someone who doesn’t own a car or someone who’s ready to finally get rid of the car they don’t want anymore.
Living car-free isn’t for everybody, but what my neighbors don’t realize is that, increasingly, car ownership is a hassle many Chicagoans are sick of. And it’s easy to see why. If you primarily walk, bike and ride the CTA, even if you spend $1,000 a year on occasional car rentals and ride-shares, you still save thousands in car payments, gas, insurance, parking and repairs. You also get steps in, can bike or use the time on the bus or train to read (or nap).
Ironically, it’s people who need to drive that should be the biggest supporters of transit-oriented developments like the one on Milwaukee: The more people walking and riding the train, the fewer cars with one person in them clogging our streets.
What we build shapes behavior, a principle we understand perfectly well in other contexts. Right now for instance, the Cubs are lobbying the city to expand a parking lot they own in Wrigleyville from 579 to 947 spots. Multiply that by 81 home games, and that’s an additional 29,808 cars that will be driving through Lakeview to and from games, every summer, just because we made that parking lot bigger.
The development on Milwaukee is about building housing in a way that gives more people the option to live without cars. The car-free life may not be for you, but it is a choice thousands of Chicagoans are ready to make — and when they do, all of us benefit.
— Cyrus Dowlatshahi, Chicago
Foreign language classes
At the recent Shield of Americas Summit, President Donald Trump praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Spanish but declared, “I don’t have time. I was OK with languages, but I’m not gonna spend time learning your language.”
Learning languages does take time. Fortunately, beginning in 2028, all Illinois high school students will dedicate at least two years to studying a second language, precisely when they do have time for learning.
Unfortunately, some Illinois state representatives are sponsoring a bill to remove the two-year foreign language requirement that hasn’t yet begun — and before students and our state can begin to reap the benefits.
I am a language educator with more than 30 years of experience teaching Spanish at the university level. Arguments against the existing law do not reflect the realities of language education, and they minimize our society’s urgent need for multilingual skills of all levels.
One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Travis Weaver, has argued that artificial intelligence eliminates the need for all Illinois students to learn another language. But foreign language education is more than just switching English words into another language. By examining other cultures, for example, students gain perspective by seeing the world through other viewpoints. This builds intercultural competence and readies them for Illinois’ multicultural work world and beyond.
Online translation and AI interpretation in real time are promising but do not replace the need for human communication and judgement. AI erred 45% of the time in a recent study coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union, and AI contains harmful biases, partly due to its overreliance on data in English.
Both Weaver and Rep. Rick Ryan, who introduced the bill, argue that high school students should instead be able to study trades, such as electrician or plumber. Yes, but tradespeople also benefit from foreign language education; their tools don’t have languages or cultures, but the people they work with and work for do.
To be sure, two years of high school foreign language classes will not produce fluent speakers across Illinois. They will lay a strong foundation and equip Illinoisans with cultural awareness that reflects our multilingual and multicultural state.
The president doesn’t have time to learn another language, but for the young Illinoisans, it is time well invested.
— Annie Abbott, professor, University of Illinois, Urbana
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