News

One of the biggest factors in CEOs’ thinking is the attitude that local and state authorities have toward business and the perceived capriciousness of regulations, particularly those imposed on smaller firms least able to bear the costs. In this respect, if it were possible to rank 60th out of 50 states, California would likely rank No. 61. Joseph Vranich, an expert on corporate relocations, has counted more than 200 major companies with tens of thousands of employees that left the Golden State over the last four years.

The winter snowpack has mostly melted throughout the West, not just in California, according to data from the fifth 2015 forecast by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

A union-led coalition of liberal groups launched a campaign to change Proposition 13, the iconic 1978 property tax limit, seeking billions more in revenue from commercial and industrial property owners.

Combined, these taxes can hit a small business hard when it eventually grows and earns more income. In California, for example, the top marginal income tax rate on pass-through businesses tops 51.9 percent. Hawaii (50.4) and New York (50.2 percent) also have top marginal tax rates on pass-through businesses over 50 percent. Even in states with no income tax, the top marginal tax rate on pass-through business income is 42.6 percent.

According to 2011 Census data, pass-through businesses employ 55.3 percent of the private sector work force of 119 million people. This represents approximately 65.8 million workers and business owners.

An expanding state economy and a temporary sales and income tax increase are flooding the state treasury with money, at least $4-plus billion more than the current budget assumes, and maybe even $5-plus billion.

The presidential election in 2016 is will be a defining generational election for California’s future. Just as we are coming out of the recession, efforts are now underway by special interest and public employee unions in Sacramento to raise $20 billion in new taxes to fund increased benefits for their members.

The Golden State has historically led the United States and the world in technology, quality of life, social innovation, entertainment, and public policy. But in recent decades its lead has ebbed. The reasons for this are various. But there is one area of decay whose story is a parable for California’s other plights—that area is infrastructure.

But California, from this drought onward, will be a state transformed. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was human-caused, after the grasslands of the Great Plains were ripped up, and the land thrown to the wind. It never fully recovered. The California drought of today is mostly nature’s hand, diminishing an Eden created by man. The Golden State may recover, but it won’t be the same place.

The issue has little to do with what’s fair or isn’t, however. It’s about stabilizing the state tax system so it reliably produces enough money for education, social services, infrastructure and public safety in good times and bad.

The unusual new startup dangles the possibility of getting Draper’s seed funding — as much as $2-4 million — for putting an idea on the state ballot. But he says he’s also willing to provide seed for non-profits and for-profit ventures, or to help fund a campaign to push an idea through the legislature.

California income tax collections in April have already exceeded the Brown administration’s January estimates, underscoring the surge of higher-than-expected money flowing into the state treasury and possibly offering health and welfare programs – not just schools – a piece of the windfall.

Since 2008, the CalChamber has identified bills that will improve the state’s job climate and stimulate the economy, designating these proposals as job creators. In general, the job creator bills include solutions that will enhance the state’s economy . . .

The reform of California is a major test of the American system. California has wrecked its middle class even as it has produced plutocratic elites in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The state has serious poverty, too—perhaps the worst in the country. That our largest state is a hopeless muddle, its infrastructure is in disarray, and its cost structure is increasingly uneconomic—this isn’t something that the rest of the country can just slough off. This is a national concern partly because the U.S. economy can’t do really well if California is sick; and partly because many of the same problems now choking California have taken root in other states as well as at the federal level.

Last month, when the BLS announced revised data for 2014, several economic analysts pointed out that California, which had been clobbered by the Great Recession, had finally surpassed Texas in the creation of new jobs.