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Just a few weeks earlier, Emanuel and other officials held a similar ribbon cutting on the far-south side for a new Walmart whose jobs were just as desperately needed, and also subsidized with millions of public dollars.
The high-profile big-box openings send a message that after years of decline, good things are happening in some of Chicago’s most depressed areas—thanks in no small part to the investment of tax funds. It’s a message that’s politically necessary for continuing the city’s current economic development policies, because apart from a few exceptions, they’re a dangerous, costly failure.
Hundreds of the job cuts came from one employer: the city of Chicago. And they’ve continued in the two years after the time period analyzed in the report.
“I’m saying, use it for what the damn TIF funds were designed to be used for in the first place.”
