Elections do have consequences. Illinois voters are now being rewarded for electing Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn to a full term. Quinn replaced the disgraced Rod Blagojevich in 2009, then won a narrow victory to serve a full term in the 2010 election. Now he is about to sign into law a whopping 67 percent personal income tax increase, and a 46 percent business tax hike. The increases were passed at 1:20 a.m. Tuesday at the tail end of a lame-duck session with no votes to spare and not a single Republican in favor. The new legislature, sworn in 12 hours later, would have defeated the scheme. Facing a $15 billion deficit, and lagging $6.8 billion behind in paying its bills, Illinois Democrats argued that raising taxes was the only responsible thing to do. Of course, the responsible thing would have been to spend less in the years before, and to cut spending now rather than boosting taxes. But even in their current crisis, Illinois Democrats prefer to make taxpayers clean up the politicians’ mess. In July, for example, Quinn gave 40,000 of the state’s unionized and heavily Democratic workers a two-year, 14 percent pay raise.

Labor and capital are mobile, and more of each will now relocate to states with more favorable tax climates than Illinois — two of which, Wisconsin and Indiana — are a short distance from Chicago. This has already happened elsewhere. In 2008, Maryland instituted a special “millionaire’s tax” and within a year a third of its top earners moved out of the state, and state revenues actually fell. Similarly, in 2009, Oregonians approved the highest top income tax rate in the nation, only to see revenues fall by 28 percent in 2010. And in California, 93 percent of the state’s drop in tax revenue over the past three years can be attributed to top earners fleeing the state.