You Kalifornia guys crack me up. Every blue state in the union has the same set of troubles plaguing the Golden State, but you think you're the only ones.
Illinois just doubled the gas tax to $.38/gallon-- it goes into effect midnight Monday, but that's kind've deceiving, because we pay sales tax on it too (9% in most places, or about $.36 more per gallon), so total state tax dwarfs California's. Sales tax varies by municipality and county, but 8-9% is average (it's above 10% in some places by Chicago). There are extra taxes on hotels, restaurants, etc. We've taxed pensions and SSI draws for years. The income tax went up 33% a couple of years back, and Springfield just voted to put a graduated income tax (to stick it to the "rich") on the ballot for 2020. The owner of a $300K home can expect to pay (at minimum) about $6000/yr in property tax (figure 2% annually, and your about right).
We've got legalized (and taxed) video gaming in every bar and grill in the state, off-track betting, and now a bunch more casinos. We've got a state lottery that was so poorly run a private company is leasing it from the state. All of this was to pay for "education". Peoria Public Schools graduation rate is 71%, so all those dollars are doing a bang-up job readying our children for life in the information age.
We just legalized recreational weed, apparently so that when Jan. 1 rolls around and all this goes into effect, we'll all be able to get stoned and feel happy about it. Weed will be heavily taxed as well. The stats are a bit old, but the murder clearance rate for Chicago dropped from over 70% for 1991 to under 34% in 2011. Nobody sees nuthin'.
We just enshrined (state funded) legal abortion up until the moment of birth into law, made smoking or vaping before your 21st birthday illegal, set state taxes on a pack of smokes at $2.98, and raised the cost to register a car 50%. We pay sales tax on the purchase of a used car, and transferring the title now costs $150.
We've got fabulous weather (blazing hot summers, below zero winters), great roads (for a third world country), and cheap state colleges (U of I tuition and fees for Illinois residents: $14K/yr), and more layers of local government that any state in the union.
It's the Shangra La of the Midwest, I tell you-- a veritable workers' paradise.
I'll trade you.