Chica­go may be known as the ​“Windy City” because of the hot air blown by its politi­cians, but the loud­est noise in the state these days is the giant suck­ing sound from Spring­field, where Gov­er­nor Bruce Rauner and com­pa­ny are attempt­ing to fur­ther enrich the wealth of the few at the expense of every­one else.

His bud­get address ear­li­er today is sim­ply an affir­ma­tion of the path he’s fol­lowed for the painful year since his inau­gu­ra­tion. In an attempt to frac­ture the grow­ing oppo­si­tion to his dis­re­gard for peo­ples’ need and star­va­tion of essen­tial insti­tu­tions Rauner said he would work to increase child­hood and pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tion fund­ing — know­ing the price he would extract in return would be unac­cept­able to the unions, Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers and oth­ers who stand in the way of his attempt to dri­ve down wages, reduce pen­sions and cut social ser­vices that he’s declared too rich for Illi­nois to afford.

Rauner’s bud­get address was more of what we’ve seen before — a growth agen­da for Illi­nois pred­i­cat­ed on impov­er­ish­ing the pock­et books and lives of the state’s work­ing people.

Rauner — aid­ed sad­ly by those in the media who cov­er Rauner’s assault as if it were a sport­ing match, rather than a fight in which people’s lives are at stake — claims to be car­ry­ing out a hero­ic bat­tle to free Illi­nois from the evil, greedy unions and their stooge Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians whom he claims have crip­pled the state. But the real­i­ty is that as in his pri­vate cor­po­rate life — in which where Rauner export­ed thou­sands of U.S. jobs to enhance his firm’s bot­tom line — Rauner is not only tax­ing the poor to feed the rich but sti­fling oppor­tu­ni­ty in Illi­nois, now and for gen­er­a­tions to come.

The past few years have been rough on the peo­ple of Illi­nois. By the end of 2015, Illi­nois had lost more than 1 mil­lion jobs, 795,700 of them dur­ing the Great Reces­sion of 2007 – 2009 alone. At the end of the ​“recov­ery,” Illi­nois has expe­ri­enced a net loss of 83,900 pri­vate sec­tor jobs since the begin­ning of 2007 — loss­es that con­tin­ued with anoth­er 3,000 jobs lost in 2015.

But the gross num­bers don’t tell the whole sto­ry. Not only have jobs been lost; a dif­fer­ent, poor­er work­force as a whole has emerged.

In man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion, trans­porta­tion and infor­ma­tion ser­vices, 287,400 jobs were lost dur­ing the reces­sion years. In the main, they haven’t come back. The only sig­nif­i­cant growth areas were for jobs in leisure and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, health care and retail — sec­tors typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with low wages.

While Illi­nois still suf­fers from high­er unem­ploy­ment than the nation as a whole (5.9 per­cent as opposed to the nation’s 4.9 per­cent), the change in the kind of jobs even those employed can get has impov­er­ished the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in Illi­nois. Those at the bot­tom, the low­est 20 per­cent, have seen a 15 per­cent decline in income; those in the mid­dle have seen at least a 4 per­cent decline. And the medi­an income has declined for all but the high­est earn­ers in Illi­nois had declined by more than $5,000 per household.

Admit­ted­ly, a decade of poor lead­er­ship — which was too inter­est­ed in imme­di­ate polit­i­cal and per­son­al gain — fid­dled while our prover­bial Rome burned. Unlike Cal­i­for­nia, Mass­a­chu­setts and oth­er states that addressed the changes in the glob­al econ­o­my by going so far as to tax them­selves to cre­ate invest­ment pool to attract tech and oth­er job-cre­at­ing indus­tries, Illi­nois politi­cians played small ball (with many too con­cerned with poten­tial indict­ments and upcom­ing chal­lenges to their office) and for­got to cre­ate a plan for­ward for Illinois.

But Rauner has been no help. Adding to the 25,000 pub­lic sec­tor jobs lost from 2010 – 2015, in Decem­ber Illi­nois became num­ber 1 in the Unit­ed States for its loss of pri­vate sec­tor jobs, post­ing the nation’s largest job loss (16,300).

But that doesn’t tell the whole sto­ry. Not all boats sank. Dur­ing the time when the major­i­ty of Illi­nois incomes were sink­ing, some pros­pered considerably.

Even with the Great Reces­sion, Illinois’s GDP grew by near­ly $100 bil­lion, from $586 bil­lion in 2007 to $642 bil­lion in 2015. It would have been good news if that growth had ben­e­fit­ted all. Instead, 97.2 per­cent of all income growth — that’s right, 97.2 per­cent — went to the top 1 per­cent of wage earn­ers, with the top 1 per­cent enhanc­ing their indi­vid­ual incomes by 35 per­cent while we in the 99 per­cent saw flat growth (0.2 percent)

As of 2012, the aver­age income of the top 1 per­cent in Illi­nois was $1,366,958, while the aver­age for the 99 per­cent was $46,000 and change. In oth­er words, the small group of those at the top had an aver­age income 29 times that of the rest. Today in Illi­nois, 50 per­cent of us earn less than $36,000 a year; 20 per­cent, less than $15,000.

Some of this is not new. Illi­nois has long been one of 15 states where the rich have ben­e­fit­ted most in recent decades, with 64.9 per­cent of all growth going to the top 1% since 1979. For those with a sense of his­to­ry, there is a more than a degree of irony here. The 1 percent’s share of wealth in Illi­nois was vir­tu­al­ly the same in 2007 as it was in 1928 — 22.5 per­cent in 1928, 22.8 in 2007 — before unions and bat­tles for racial and gen­der equal­i­ty lev­eled the play­ing field for decades. All told, since 1979, Illi­nois’ top 1 per­cent increased their incomes by 177 per­cent; the bot­tom 99 per­cent saw a decrease of 1.2 percent.

That the cur­rent recov­ery­has ben­e­fit­ted only the rich under­scores the men­dac­i­ty of Rauner’s argu­ments that the greed of work­ing peo­ples’ orga­ni­za­tions greed holds the state back. The deci­sions and greed of those at the top that has starved the work­ing peo­ple of Illi­nois of the jobs and income need­ed to sus­tain life. They are the deci­sion mak­ers who close or move com­pa­nies to Indi­ana, Mis­sis­sip­pi or Chi­na to squeeze more prof­it out of com­pa­nies whose work­ers cre­at­ed the wealth they now appropriate.

There is trou­ble ahead. Those earn­ing the most mon­ey in Illi­nois are not the future. The high­est wage earn­ers are over 50 (mak­ing more than 60,000 a year), while the vast major­i­ty of those under 30 make less than 30,000 per year. Only those with col­lege degrees earn more than $36,000 a year – the min­i­mum need­ed to raise a fam­i­ly in Illinois.

Illi­nois ranks num­ber 5 out of 50 states for hav­ing the most regres­sive tax­es with the poor­est 20 per­cent of res­i­dents pay­ing 13.6 per­cent of their income in tax­es as opposed to just 4.6 per­cent for the top 1 per­cent. Rauner’s poli­cies just make it worse.

Rauner’s war against the work­ing and poor of Illi­nois began with his refusal to renew the 1.25 per­cent income tax sur­charge that expired at the end of 2014. Rauner, who made $61 mil­lion in 2013, per­son­al­ly gained a $750,000 sav­ings as did the rest of the state’s 1 per­cent, includ­ing our state’s 66 bil­lion­aires like Sam Zell and Ken Grif­fin who have joined and fund­ed Rauner’s cam­paign to low­er wages, destroy unions and cut gov­ern­ment programs.

Already thou­sands of seniors have either lost fun­da­men­tal ser­vices or must dig deep­er into mea­gre pen­sions to get the help they need. Low- and mod­er­ate-income fam­i­lies who depend on afford­able child care in order to work now find it either denied to them or more expen­sive — often forc­ing fam­i­lies to choose between nec­es­sary income-pro­duc­ing jobs and qual­i­ty care for their chil­dren. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of low income and work­ing Illi­nois fam­i­lies have seen their costs of health care rise due both to the bud­get impasse and Rauner’s pro­pos­al to slash health care fund­ing mov­ing forward.The mil­lions of Illi­nois res­i­dents. Already, social ser­vice agen­cies that serve chil­dren, the elder­ly and the infirm have been crip­pled by the bud­get impasse. The state’s largest non­prof­it, Luther­an Social Ser­vices, was forced to lay off 750 employ­ees. Hous­ing devel­op­ment, with the shel­ter and jobs they pro­vide, are stalled as the Illi­nois Hous­ing Trust Fund is held hostage.

For the peo­ple of Illi­nois to recov­er requires increas­es in edu­ca­tion, the abil­i­ty to work, bet­ter and bet­ter-pay­ing jobs. Yet Rauner’s poli­cies have been and would do just the oppo­site: tax the poor and mid­dle class, low­er the wages of work­ing peo­ple and deny peo­ple the resources and invest­ments they need to prosper.

One thou­sand would-be col­lege stu­dents have already dropped out of school due to the end­ing of schol­ar­ship pay­ments, and 150,000 Illi­nois stu­dents who rely on MAP grants to allow them to afford col­lege — and for which there has been no fund­ing in the cur­rent year — must now decide if they can afford the very edu­ca­tion on which their future depends. Rauner’s slash­ing of funds to cities and refusal to aid Chica­go and oth­er school sys­tems with­out dra­con­ian labor rights roll­backs deprives chil­dren — par­tic­u­lar­ly those chil­dren of col­or, whose dis­tricts already suf­fer from dis­parate spend­ing — of the teach­ers, books, tech­nol­o­gy and men­tors they need. Rauner’s pro­posed $387 mil­lion cut to high­ere­d­u­ca­tion threat­ens the qual­i­ty and via­bil­i­ty of the very insti­tu­tions need­ed to boost oppor­tu­ni­ty and income for today’s youth and places an extra­or­di­nary finan­cial bur­den on the work­ing peo­ple of the state while under­min­ing the state’s goal of assur­ing that 60 per­cent of the Illi­nois work­force have col­lege degrees by 2025.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A mod­est but nec­es­sary begin­ning would be restor­ing the tax sur­charge. While Rauner and com­pa­ny gained $750,000 from its sun­set, the rest of us saw a max­i­mum sav­ing of a mea­ger $930 — hard­ly enough to begin to pay for the health care, senior care, child care, finan­cial aid and oth­er ser­vices that are essen­tial for their lives.

Fol­low­ing up on that might be the insti­tu­tion of a millionaire’s tax — vot­ed for, even dur­ing Rauner’s elec­tion, by 86 per­cent of Chicagoans, 80 per­cent of those in Cook Coun­ty and a full 63 % statewide.

And this is not some wild-eyed, rad­i­cal scheme. The poster boy for pro­gres­sive and sound growth is Minnesota’s Gov­er­nor Mark Day­ton, who in his first four years in office both raised the state income tax to 9.85 per­cent on indi­vid­u­als and cou­ple earn­ing $150,000 and $250,000 a year respec­tive­ly. Despite the dire warn­ing of Repub­li­cans that those moves would send jobs and peo­ple flee­ing, between 2011 and 2015, Min­neso­ta actu­al­ly added 172,000 jobs, achieved a bud­get sur­plus of more than $1 bil­lion and raised indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies’ incomes.

And we need to raise the min­i­mum wage to $15 per hour, the bare min­i­mum a full-time work­er needs to sus­tain a fam­i­ly. We have to equal­ize fund­ing for schools. And, of course, pass laws requir­ing equal wages for women — who today head an esti­mat­ed 25 per­cent of all Illi­nois house­holds and 40 per­cent of the states’ fam­i­lies liv­ing in poverty

You might expect that the sup­pos­ed­ly far-sight­ed busi­ness lead­ers who Rauner counts as his friends would see the wis­dom of such a strat­e­gy. But they don’t. Nine wealthy fam­i­lies con­tributed half of the $65 mil­lion Rauner used to pro­pel him­self to the governor’s office. Men like Chicagoan Ken Grif­fin, who we learned from his quite pub­lic divorce lit­i­ga­tion with for­mer wife Anne Dias Grif­fin rakes in $68 mil­lion a month (after tax­es) and bil­lion­aire Sam Zell, whose own­er­ship of the Chica­go Tri­bune almost end­ed it.

Not sat­is­fied with gain­ing the governor’s man­sion, many of these same bil­lion­aires have band­ed togeth­er in a super Pac and raised more than $14 mil­lion to con­vince the rest of us that we are the ones who make too much money.

Com­plet­ing the irony, last spring a group of wealth Chicagoans gath­ered at a char­i­ta­ble event to hear Sam Zell opine on the future of invest­ing. He told the group that the main imped­i­ment to growth was wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion. Where he saw real oppor­tu­ni­ty was not in Illi­nois (even though his hand-picked gov­er­nor had sure­ly con­tained wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion in his home state) was in India and Colombia.

So it goes. The bil­lion­aires with­out loy­al­ty to place or per­son take the wealth extract­ed from city and cit­i­zen and sends it abroad to bet­ter exploit work­ers there. As for the char­i­ty event, $1.6 mil­lion was raised for Invest for Chi­dren, which funds sev­en child-focused agen­cies in Illinois.

Giv­en the cuts in tax­es and ser­vices that Rauner has pro­posed and that Zell, Grif­fin are sup­port­ing, the state’s chil­dren will need a lot more char­i­ty than that.