The state of Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1818, back when it was a western frontier state. Next year, 2018, the state plans to celebrate its bicentennial.
Trouble is, the Land of Lincoln is finding it hard to scrape the money together, in part due to the state’s long-in-the-making financial disaster.
Bicentennials aren’t necessarily good things for governments to celebrate.
Back in 1965, Mancur Olson penned one of his two great contributions to the “public choice” school of economics. His book, The Logic of Collective Action, took a hard look at why some groups are better at organizing and getting government to do what they want than others. Well-defined special interest groups with common interests and higher per capita stakes in outcomes tend to organize themselves more effectively—and rule the roost. Governments tend to do their bidding, frequently at the expense of the Average Joe and Jane.
Olson followed up with The Rise and Decline of Nations in 1982. Taking a long (and wide) look at government history, Olson developed his thesis that the longer a society/nation remains relatively stable, the more likely it is to have special interest groups lobbying in ways that undermine government financial infrastructure, with broader long-term economic consequences.
Looking across the 50 states with our State Data Lab website, we include the year a state was admitted to the Union as one of the 250 variables in the database. Older states like Illinois tend to have higher per-Taxpayer Burdens and slower recent economic growth. Older states also tend to have higher special-interest group concentrations, and lower economic freedom rankings.