So thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview with us. My name is Elizabeth Renato and I'm the editor-in-chief of the Zavirite, and then I'll be conducting the interview today. So let's hop right into the questions. Currently, Illinois has been dealing with some troubling times.
So what do you see as the biggest problem facing the state right now and how would you address it? Well, one main big problem is the number of people leaving the state. Just three to 40,000 people left last year. These people are, you know, better earning people, better, you know, better hiring time people.
So if they leave, they'll take the money and they'll take the jobs, living with them. And if that continues, that's very bad, you know, because I mean, the people who stayed here who have to pay higher taxes or be increased services or whatever. So there's two reasons why they're leaving. I mean, the North Carolina violence in Chicago, all the shootings and murders there.
And so I think one thing we can do to solve that is to take the money out of the drug trade, you know, telling each other for the money for drugs. So we need to legalize marijuana, drop the whole state, or at least Chicago, and legalize marijuana and take the money out of that. And I'm proposing, you know, legalization, completely legalization of recreational marijuana, just like they have in Colorado and California and those other states. We regulate, of course, like we do with alcohol, but we need to legalize that to take the money out of the drug trade.
And then the other reason the problem of people who are leaving is because of very high taxes and property taxes, income taxes, all the different kinds of taxes that people bring in the end to set up a business or, you know, all the surrounding states because of the taxes. So I would rebate the marijuana money, the increase revenue for the marijuana, directly to property owners to help with the property taxes. So in a way that you're solving two problems with one stone, getting two birds of one stone with a marijuana situation. So that's what I would do to include situations.
Okay, great. And then my next question for you is, your website says that the best way to get our national economy back on its feet is to stimulate middle class funding. Can you explain to me a little more exactly what you mean by that? Yeah, well, by imposing tax increases, there's one way to do that.
The middle class taxes are pretty high the way they are now. So I'm opposed to a graduated income tax. All the other, my five opponents are four graduating objects. So I think about the tax like that will target the middle class.
And the middle class, the meat is people make like 50,000 to three or 400,000 a year. I would consider it the middle class. So a graduated income tax will target these people and the decrease amount of money they have and decrease the spending, you know, they're spending as they do. So our economy is very heavily dependent on consumer activity.
So if you take money away, that's less consumer activity for that group. Okay, great. And then as a college student, how would you make a college education more affordable for students? Yeah, here's the other thing.
The only item I talk about. I think we ought to legalize casino gambling for Chicago. This would be geared to the, to us, the 55 million tourists come to the city every year. And they're pretty well to do people, you know.
So I think if we had that geared toward tourists, they'll generate a bonus amount of money, plus a matter of money. And that's how you pay for education. A student loan is where I would use the casino money for it to pay back to help students pay for these loans because they're pretty big loans and they post a lot of things like marriage and children and they find a home and they post a lot of things because of these big loans. You know, so if they have a casino gambling money helping them with some of those loans, I think it would help them a lot.
Okay, great. And then my last question for you is we have a good number of students here at St. Xavier. That depend on the math grant.
How will you work to improve or defend that? That's the same thing. We want to, you need more money for that. But it would be four continuing that and we need to get more money to do that.
And the way to do that is to these two sources that I already mentioned, casino gambling for Chicago and I would be against increasing income taxes. And either, you know, with a graduate tax or a flat tax. Because that penalizes people who work hard to make more money. We find out how to find other sources of income.