Public Finance of the States: The Midwest
The Fiscal Character of the Midwest The Midwest is America’s fiscal middle ground—neither the high-tax, high-service model of the Northeast nor the low-tax competition model of the South. But within that broad characterization lies enormous variation, from Illinois’s catastrophic pension crisis to Indiana’s reputation for conservative fiscal management to Minnesota’s Scandinavian-inflected public sector tradition. The Census Bureau divides the Midwest into the East North Central and West North Central divisions, though the more meaningful distinction for fiscal purposes is between the industrial Great Lakes states and the agricultural Plains states. ...