At a Capitol hearing on Thursday, that nearly forgotten idea reared its head as the state’s government-reform agency, the Little Hoover Commission, examined why Californians don’t trust their government. TQM was on a list of one speaker’s management fads that, over the years, failed to improve services enough to restore the public’s confidence in its governments.
The majority of hired farmworkers in the U.S., estimated at around 1 million, are Mexican, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In California, Mexican migrants account for 90% of hired workers, according to independent estimates. But the pool of Mexican agricultural workers is steadily declining, with no indication that it will be reversed, according to J. Edward Taylor, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis.
Mr. LePage, who just began his second term, would lower top individual and corporate income taxes, broaden the number of goods and services covered by the sales tax and offer tax credits for low-income residents. He said his plan would make Maine more competitive and attract more young families to the nation’s grayest state
One of the goals of tax reform is to improve the competitiveness of U.S. businesses and grow the economy. A promising way to do that is by lowering taxes on saving and investment through business tax reform. Much time is devoted to improving the corporate side of the tax code, but corporate-only business tax reform misses a significant portion of business activity.
The United States currently has a large number of pass-through businesses, or businesses that pay their taxes through the individual income tax code rather than through the corporate code. These sole proprietorships, S corporations, and partnerships make up the vast majority of businesses and more than 60 percent of net business income in America. In addition, pass-through businesses account for more than half of the private sector workforce and 37 percent of total private sector payroll. Pass-through businesses are represented in all industries in the United States.
All of that notwithstanding, Proposition 2 is not the best solution to revenue volatility, which is caused by a too-high reliance on personal income taxes from a relative handful of wealthy Californians whose incomes from stocks and other capital assets go up and down like yo-yos.
Much noise has been made over the years about California’s unfriendly tax environment. But an ongoing mantra at Beacon Economics is that California is not so much a ‘high’ tax state as a ‘dumb’ tax state. In other words, it is the structure of revenues that creates the problem, not simply the quantity being collected. This is important because it suggests that if we make certain logical changes to the structure of taxes in the state, it could simultaneously make California more business friendly while helping to cure the long-term deficit issues we still face – despite the current ‘balanced’ budget.
So when we were able to zero in on four issues that frustrate a broad spectrum of businesses, we decided to dub them The Four Horsemen.
A comprehensive analysis of the Golden State’s cap-and-trade program.
In the Governor’s 2015-16 budget proposal, the administration raises its revenue estimates, and this results in a multibillion-dollar influx of new funds for schools and community colleges under the Proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee. The Governor’s plan identifies cost pressures and budget risks in health and human services programs, and new program commitments outside of Proposition 98 are limited. The Governor’s proposal to pay off the state’s retiree health liabilities over the next few decades would, if funded, address the last of state government’s large unaddressed liabilities. We conclude the state likely will collect more tax revenue in 2014-15 than the administration now estimates. Barring a sustained stock market drop, an additional 2014-15 revenue gain of $1 billion to $2 billion seems likely in addition to the Governor’s budget projection. Even bigger gains of a few billion dollars more are possible in 2014-15. These additional 2014-15 revenues will go largely or entirely to schools and community colleges and could result in a few billion dollars of higher ongoing state payments to schools. Whether tax revenues grow further, stagnate, or, in the worst case, decline in 2015-16 will depend in large part on trends in volatile capital gains and business income.
An upswing in the U.S. economy has contributed to a surge in economic optimism but provided no similar improvement in the standing of the nation’s political leaders, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.
Since February 2010, U.S. manufacturing employment has increased at a rate of 6.7%, with some Midwestern and Southern states such as Indiana and South Carolina seeing gains of 15% or more. By contrast, California manufacturing has grown at about 1% over the same period.
The Port of Oakland has reached an all-time high in cargo volume last year, and that’s largely because the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles diverted some of their cargo north, the Sacramento Bee reports. In December, the Southern California ports rerouted a total of 74,356 containers to Oakland.
Those additional pension costs steadily increase until 2046. That year, districts are expected to spend an additional $9.3 billion over what they would have under the prior structure. The state would contribute an additional $2.2 billion that year, and teachers would chip in $1 billion.
Strong financial results, fueled by bullish stock markets and income-producing real estate, helped boost CalPERS’ funding level to 77% at the end of the 2014 fiscal year, up from 69.8% on June 30, 2013.
But, as Brown warns in his proposed 2015-16 budget, “economic expansions do not last forever. In the post-war period, the average expansion has been about five years. The current expansion has already exceeded the average by nine months. While there are few signs of immediate contraction, another recession is inevitable.”