(The Center Square) – Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski says there’s no shortage of reasons why Chicago now finds itself in a new national survey that ranks it near the bottom for “best large cities” to start a business in 2025.
As part of the survey, Wallethub compared the startup opportunities currently existing in some 100 cities, weighing metrics ranging from the five-year business-survival rate to labor costs to office-space affordability.
“Chicago right now is in trouble given the economic problems, crime problems, population and taxes,” Dabrowski told The Center Square. “It needs a lot of growth and for that, you need to have a great business environment and that’s a problem. When you don’t have a good business environment, and it’s also business costs, it’s hard for companies to start up.”
Dabrowski said nothing about the city’s poor showing should strike anyone as a surprise.
“We have a good base, great people and a great infrastructure in terms of where we’re located in the country,” he said. “What you have to do is leverage that and make it really easy for somebody to start a business, and that means you have to make it so that taxes are low, there’s high job growth. You have to make it so that Chicago is a growth hub, people want to be here, businesses want to be here, investment wants to be here.”
Lowering the tax burden residents are forced to endure would also go a long way toward improving job growth and stabilizing the state’s dwindling population, he said.
“You’ve got to change, move us in a better direction,” said Dabrowski. “You’ve got to start controlling these pension debts. Pension debts mean more taxes and more taxes mean less entrepreneurs. We’ve got to make it so that we attract people. We’re chasing people out with high property taxes and high overall taxation. And of course, you’ve got to address crime. Ken Griffin and Citadel left Chicago in large part because of crime. You can’t have a bunch of financiers and high finance people to support entrepreneurs if crime is chasing them away.”
