Even un-savvy people can see price history and property tax history. I would guess most people are stuck where they are simply because they don't want to lose access to their friends/family, but for higher income/able to move workers, it's not difficult to see which way land prices/property tax are trending.

Well, that, and the fact that anyone who buys a house pretty much anywhere will eventually be hit with higher taxes and fewer services. So for a lot of people, that's probably not being factored very highly because the same thing is happening everywhere. It's just the nature of the fire/teacher/police contracts that were given out all over the nation in preceding decades.

So the deciding factor becomes something more like, "How much is the job I'm being offered going to pay me vs the cost of living?" They may also think about personal contacts, and the future opportunities a city is likely to provide them? I'd imagine it doesn't go too much further than that though.

>The tax situation can't get much worse, it's almost mathematically impossible to pay all these pensions, it can only get better from here.

What? The tax increases are just starting. This year, Illinois is voting to change from a flat % income tax to having marginal rates. Anyone earning any decent amount of money should expect to pay more and more every year in income tax, property tax, sales taxes, tolls, fees for car registration, basically anything that can help increase tax revenue since expenses aren't going anywhere but up also for the next couple decades. Unless benefit recipients die earlier than expected.