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| Chicago native Hugh Hefner is heading for the warmer ambiance of El Lay |
Two longtime pillars of the Chicago business community, AON insurance and Playboy announced this past week that they are moving their corporate headquarters out of Chicago.
Playboy, which was founded here in 1953 by native Chicagoan, Hugh Hefner, originally planned to move only its editorial departments to the West Coast, but announced on January 13, that it was moving everything out, lock, stock and bunny ears.
Playboy didn't explain why it was leaving for LA. Ultra-lefty California is going broke, just like Illinois and it certainly is no tax haven. Maybe Hefner just likes the weather and ambiance of El-Lay better than that of glacial Chicago.
But AON Corp., which is heading for greener pastures in London cited the financial benefits of a more global effective tax rate overseas compared with the United States
That makes sense when you consider that the top corporate tax rate in the US is 38% compared to 26% in the UK. And the Conservative British government has enacted a schedule for further reducing corporate tax rates to a top rate of 24% by 2014. In contrast, the socialist-oriented Obama regime continues to howl for ever higher corporate taxes.
Add to this the recent move of Illinois Democrats to increase state taxes on corporations by 65% and you don't have to be a genius to see why it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do business here and hire employees here.
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| AON Founder, Chicagoan, W. Clement Stone would have surely approved of AON's move |
AON was started by Chicagoan W. Clement Stone in 1925 with a $100 loan, a shoeshine and a smile. The thrifty and positive-thinking Stone turned that into Combined Insurance and then in turn into AON -- one of the largest risk management firms in the world.
Stone was a hard-core business conservative and a big financial backer of President Richard Nixon and the, then dominant, Illinois GOP.
Love Chicago, as he might have, Stone is surely not turning over in his grave at news of this hard-headed, sensible, decision to abandon Chicago.
In fact, W.Clement Stone would surely have approved of AON's decision to flee Chicago's socialist morass.
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Comments invited, however anonymous commentors had better deal directly with the issues raised and avoid ad hominem drivel. As for Teachers' Union seminar writers -- forget about it.