I grew up as the son of an Irish immigrant raised in a predominantly Italian, Polish and Irish neighborhood. There were very few people from other parts of the world living in my neighborhood. But I always had an inquisitive mind and always had a desire to learn about different cultures. My exposure to world culture didn’t start in the classroom, but by visiting and getting to know the immigrants who ran small businesses around me. By visiting with my parents, dry cleaners, convenience stores, and yes liquor stores, I became exposed to different cultures.

As I got older and was able to do these visits myself, years of friendship developed from repeated visits. I often marveled at the hard work and the great ingenuity it must have taken to come half way across the world and enter into a foreign land with a foreign culture and a foreign language.

I found my conversations with these small business owners provided me some of the greatest education I ever received. I learned about Greece, India, Korea, amongst many cultures and I learned it not from the book but by fortuitous experience.  I felt very fortune to get a world view of different cultures from people whose personal traits I admired so much.

What concerns me these days is whether we can sustain this culture in Chicago. The convenience and liquor store owners, especially those on the southside of Chicago and those bordering Indiana face great perils in their business.

Specifically, when it comes to selling alcohol in a competitive marketplace. The liquor excise tax in Illinois is roughly seven times higher than what it is in Indiana. Border stores are getting crushed because they simply can’t compete on price. It is cheaper for Illinois retailers to buy at retail in Indiana than to buy at wholesale in Illinois.

So, these businesses are presented with many bad choices, cheat and buy at retail in Indiana so you can make a profit, follow the rules and be uncompetitive in the marketplace, or go out of business.

Because they are getting crushed by the cost of doing business in Illinois, these border state retailers may go the way of many border state gas stations.

Instead of throwing the drowning man a lifeline, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposes to put another nail in their coffin by proposing a liquor tax increase because there hasn’t been one in fifteen years. And yes, City of Chicago establishment group, the Civic Federation, recommends a liquor tax also, but ignores or does not care about the plight of these small businesses. If it was a larger business the Civic Federation would be all over it, but the plight of the small and vulnerable business escapes their area of concern.

There is no doubt the City of Chicago’s finances are a blight. There is a nearly $1 billion budget deficit and the liberal spending barrage keeps going.

But the lack of funds did not keep Mayor Brandon Johnson from fulfilling his highest priority, taking care of the Chicago Teacher’s Union. Even though staring down a $1 billion dollar deficit, he tried to strong arm the CEO of Chicago Public schools to sign off on a $300 million high interest loan to fund the union’s demands.

In the past decade Chicago Public Schools (CPS) enrollment has shrunk by 20%. [1] The last ten years, even with the student shrinkage, spending per student has doubled and math proficiency dropped 78% and reading proficiency declined 63%.[2]

Clearly, we have a school system that is failing and a teacher’s union that deserves much of the blame for the failure.

Sadly, the city political and civic leaders are calling on some of the most economically vulnerable to help pick up the pieces of this broken mess. But are they trying to get the blood out of the turnip?

As I see the lack of thought provided to these small business owners when proposing taxes, it makes me wonder how thoughtful our civic and political leaders are?

I am truly grateful that I experienced small businesses from different cultures around the world. My exposure to them made my life richer and taught me an education on world cultures that I could never learn from a book.

They are great people who overcome a lot of barriers to live the American Dream and make this country so unique and great.

But their government instead of encouraging them is setting out to destroy them.

Civic groups may look at this as a sin tax, but they fail to see what this proposed liquor tax is really is, a killer of small businesses that already operate under a heavy burden.

I guess I can’t make sense of it all, we impose a tax on those immigrants wanting success to pay for the growth of a government system that fails us.  Only in Chicago!

[1] https://www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2023/9/19/23881541/chicago-public-schools-enrollment-2023-increase-migrants/#:~:text=CPS%20enrollment%20has%20been%20in,declines%20of%20roughly%2010%2C000%20students.

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/chicago-school-spending-scores-have-dropped-1917053