It’s hard to imagine a more mind-boggling confession of the mayor's ignorance of basic economics
There are only a handful of institutions whose brand still moves markets, boardrooms, and City Hall all at once. The Wall Street Journal is one of them — a subscription-driven daily whose reporting and editorial pages are paid for by a readership that matters in the world of money: investors, corporate CEOs, and the people who decide where jobs land. As of 2025 the Journal and its parent Dow Jones report roughly 4.2 million paid subscribers across print and digital platforms — a reach and a credibility most local politicians can only dream about.
So when the Journal’s editorial page puts a mayor from the nation’s third-largest city on its crosshairs, you should sit up. On Saturday, November 1, the Journal ran a piece with no patience for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s latest scheme — the resurrection of a corporate “head tax” — and the editorial headline didn’t bother to tuck its scorn in polite language: “Chicago’s Head Case Wants a Head Tax.” That’s not mild editorialist sniping; it’s a national newspaper telling the country this mayor’s policy choices are not only wrongheaded, they are newsworthy because they matter to business, jobs, and the city’s future.
Let’s be blunt: The idea Johnson is pitching — a per-employee surcharge on larger employers in Chicago to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap — is one of those taxes that caters to the loony left DSA commies and scares off money like the plague.
Mayor 6.6’s 2026 budget outline floated a plan that would charge roughly $21 a month per employee at large firms as part of an effort to plug a near-$1.15 billion hole. The arithmetic may balance on a municipal ledger, but the economic signal it sends is ugly: Chicago will tax jobs. If you’re a CEO weighing headquarters, a tech shop looking to expand, or a manufacturer considering a Midwest location, that signal matters.
The Journal didn’t stop at the policy critique. It pointed out the larger political dysfunction: the mayor pitching a job-killing surcharge while City Hall can’t marshal a coherent fiscal plan or command the trust of the aldermanic majority. That lack of alignment is more than a municipal tantrum; it’s a cancer for economic development. Corporations don’t relocate for civic theater. They relocate for predictable taxes, reliable services, and a workforce that can get to work without fearing for its safety. The Journal’s verdict — blunt and public — is a reputational gut punch to a city already on the financial ropes, in no small part because it has been America’s murder capital for 13 years running and has America’s worst mayor. Chicago is a national disgrace. Why would any CEO of sound mind want to subject his company to our crazy mayor’s depredations?
And there’s immediate political pushback to match the national ridicule. A majority of the City Council has publicly signaled opposition to the head-tax resurrection, making this plan politically fragile inside City Hall even before business groups file lawsuits or executives take their expansion plans elsewhere. If the council kills the scheme — which looks likely — we’ll still be left with the damage done by the proposal itself: headlines in the Journal, local businesses rattled, and talent and companies quietly taking notes.
You could argue this is par for the course. Johnson has been no stranger to national headlines that call him out. The Journal’s editorial pages have returned to this theme before: An earlier piece branded Johnson “America’s worst mayor” in no uncertain terms after a string of fiscal and policy missteps. This isn’t merely press sniping; it’s a pattern: National outlets are now using Chicago as an example of progressive governance gone awry. Those judgments matter — every CEO and investor reads them and writes us off, making our financial plight even more hopeless. The only consolation is that they may be real political capital that opponents can use to defeat this loony tune.
Now imagine the damage in terms of talent, tourism, and new business. A headline in the Wall Street Journal is read by people who move factories, sign commercial leases, and finance urban projects (watch for the interest rates on city debt to go through the roof due to perceived non-payment risk). They are, by and large, the kind of readers who interpret a mayor’s flirtation with a punitive jobs tax as a red flag. For a city like Chicago — which competes with red states and other blue cities for business relocations and conventions — that red flag projects into fewer headquarters, fewer expansions, and more cautious CFOs. It is exactly the kind of slow bleed an administration can’t afford.
Let’s not pretend this is merely about the Journal’s editorial posture. Last month’s budget blueprint included other troubling revenue gambits — probably illegal social-media levies, expanded amusement taxes, and dipping into TIF reserves — moves that read like a mayor trying to paper over structural deficits with novelty taxes and one-time accounting tricks. Those may win headlines in liberal outlets; they lose jobs and investment in the real economy. The Journal’s ridicule is a headline, but the long-term risk is fiscal sclerosis: companies that delay, sites that go to other cities, and smaller tax base growth, all mean less of the revenue boosts the city desperately needs to avoid Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
So what should we Chicagoans who love this city and don’t want to see it destroyed do? Organize and join opposition coalitions, back aldermanic candidates who prioritize economic growth and public safety, support transparent fiscal plans that include both spending cuts and organic revenue growth, and use the ballot box. Make your voice heard in every forum possible—social media, letters to editors, op-eds, town halls, and word-of-mouth. Speak up and speak out! Have the courage of your convictions put your money where your mouth is. Donate to campaigns of candidates that want to oust this goofball.
This city let a quality moderate Democrat in Paul Vallas down — don’t let it happen again. Save our city from the knaves and fools who want to destroy it. The alternative — letting headlines and bad policy accumulate — is how cities bleed talent and investment over a generation.
Yes, this mayor has made a string of poor calls. He deserves robust criticism in print and opposition on the ballot. Democracy is messy and often painfully slow; it still offers a remedy: organizing, campaigning, voting, and holding elected officials accountable within the law. If you want Johnson out of City Hall, collect signatures, run a campaign, fund challengers, and show up on election day in force.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board — in a paper read by people who put their money where their mouths are — put Chicago on notice. That notice should sting. Chicagoans who love their city must answer with better candidates, better policy, better turnout. If Johnson’s head-tax gambit collapses under political pressure — and it looks like it may — let it be the first of many reminders that governance requires competence and courage, not gimmicks.
