Carbon Engineering is a company co-founded by Harvard physicist David Keith and funded, among others, by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Since 2015, the firm has been running a CO2 extraction plant in Canada, testing out a technology that was until recently rejected as too costly. Keith and his collaborators, who wrote the paper, have used […]
States have the authority to make online retailers collect sales taxes, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, opening a new chapter in economic history where e-commerce is treated as a mature player in a marketplace that is no longer defined by trips to the corner store or the shopping mall. By a 5-to-4 vote, the court […]
The U.S. shale boom kicked off with natural gas a decade ago, and dry gas production is expected to keep surging by another 60 percent during the next 20 years, according to a new report Wednesday. While much of the shale focus is now on oil production in West Texas, it all started with natural […]
When the California Housing Finance Agency was created in 1975 in Governor Jerry Brown’s first term, the mission was simple: help low- and moderate-income families buy their first home. More than 40 years later, amid skyrocketing housing prices and near-record low homeownership rates, that goal is getting harder and harder to attain. So much so […]
For most Americans, access to decent, affordable rental housing remains cruelly beyond reach. Only in 22 counties in the United States is a one-bedroom home affordable to someone working 40 hours per week at federal minimum wage. That’s from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) report, which outlines the mismatch between wages and rent […]
Even assuming that California avoids a long-overdue economic downturn, where would Newsom get the immense sums of money that he’d need to deliver his agenda? Just providing “guaranteed health care for all” would cost at least $100 billion more in taxes on someone, according to analyses of a single-payer measure that passed the Senate before […]
Senate Bill 863 is a double dose of sneakiness—combining, in just 17 words, two separate efforts to block Californians from knowing what their elected officials are doing. First of all, it continues the unseemly practice of misusing “budget trailer bills” for purposes that are unrelated to the budget. . . . In this particular case, […]
A proposed tax on California’s drinking water, designed to clean up contaminated water for thousands of Californians, was abandoned by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders Friday as part of the compromise on the state budget. Lawmakers and Brown’s office scrapped the “Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act,” which would have taxed residents 95 cents […]
Garcetti called for the city to more than double the amount of money it spends on repairs to D- and F-ranked streets, where pavement is so damaged that it frequently needs to be rebuilt — typically at a cost of $1 million or more per lane mile. Yet a major portion of that work cannot […]
Last week’s primary election garnered considerable statewide and national attention, with much of the focus on the governor’s race and contested congressional seats. Further down the ballot, however, voters were asked to decide on millions of dollars of local tax, bond, and fee initiatives. On the whole, these measures enjoyed considerable success across the state. […]
One, Brown kept Democratic spending in check, but he also raised income taxes astronomically on the wealthy. Maybe all those taxes weren’t necessary in the rebounding economy. Two, state spending under Brown — despite his skinflint image — has risen from roughly $131 billion to $200 billion, 53% in eight years. Why does spending keep […]
Out of Reach documents the gap between renters’ wages and the cost of rental housing. The report’s Housing Wage is the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing costs. It is based on HUD’s Fair Market Rent […]
Unlike a tax on a general base (like income or consumption), an excise tax is a tax on a specific good or activity. Excise taxes are commonly levied on cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, soda, gasoline, insurance premiums, amusement activities, and pari-mutuels (betting), among other goods and activities. Excise taxes make up a relatively small portion of […]
Seeking to address the economic and social disparity facing many neighborhoods in his city – inequities he said were highlighted by the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in March – Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced Thursday he will ask voters to raise the city’s sales tax to 1 percentage point through a November ballot […]
Mountain View’s city council voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with plans to charge its largest employer, Google, millions of dollars through a tax based on its number of employees. The proposed tax, which would require voter approval, would update the city’s business license fee and charge Google about $3.3 million annually for its more […]