When we were young raising our family, pinching pennies to pay the mortgage and take care of the children, we’d see news stories about rising violent crime in my hometown of Chicago.

We’d breathe a sigh of relief, thankful that we were no longer in the street gang neighborhoods where murders were commonplace.

Yeah, we paid high property taxes in the suburbs—too high because the Chicago Teachers Union dictated the state’s politics—but at least we thought we were safer.

We thought we’d escaped. That lasted until it didn’t.  Now we’re gone.

And I see Illinois residents running as fast as they can for the exits, not only retirees and geezers like me fleeing to Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

But young people with good incomes—the kind a place can’t afford to lose—are fleeing Illinois as if from the plague.