Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., spent much of the last year stumping for advances in energy production. He maintains that things like solar plants, nuclear power and electric cars will do little to solve global warming in the relatively near-term. The only way to halt global warming is to find an energy source that produces no greenhouse gases, Gates has said.
Californians are likely to pay more for gasoline, electricity, food and new homes — and to feel their lives jolted in myriad other ways — because their state broadly expanded its war on climate change this summer.
The Bay Area’s black population experienced a dramatic migration into outer suburban parts of the region over a 14-year span, the result of the rising cost of living in inner regions, according to a new report by the Oakland nonprofit Urban Habitat.
The union has denounced the administration’s proposed wage increase of 12 percent over four years as inadequate because it fails to address what it contends are gender pay inequities in the state workforce. It also objects to the administration’s proposal that employees pay more for their health benefits.
As housing prices continue to rise in California, a significant number of our residents are being denied access to the American dream of homeownership. Today, only about one-third of our fellow citizens can afford to buy a median-priced home in the Golden State, down from a peak of 56 percent just four years ago.
“California generally leads in both overcrowding and severe overcrowding. The state’s share of overcrowded households in the nation is 27 percent, while the state has 30 percent of severely overcrowded households, almost 3 times its 11 percent share of households. Only Hawaii has a higher severe overcrowding rate than California, at 3.8 percent of households California’s severe overcrowding rate is 2.9 percent. By contrast, average for the United States is a much lower 1.1 percent.”
If there is anything that just about every Californian agrees with, it is that it costs too much to live in the state. Over the last few years, the price of buying a home or renting an apartment has become so burdensome that it pervades almost every issue, from the state’s elevated poverty rate to the debate about multimillion-dollar tear-downs to the lines of recreational vehicles parked on Silicon Valley side streets.
Homebuyers needed at least a six-figure income to afford the median-priced house in Orange and Los Angeles counties over the summer, the California Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.
The city and county have approved the formation of Valley Clean Energy Alliance, which will be a nonprofit joint powers authority local energy provider. The formation of the Valley Clean Energy Alliance means that customers can decide what kind of electric generation they prefer, and they can potentially shop for price.
The two annual time changes have a net negative effect on consumer spending, according to a report the JPMorgan Chase Institute released Thursday. . . The new report confirms U.S. consumer habits may be swayed by sunlight, in some cases. But the reduction in spending when most of the country “falls back” to shift daylight an hour earlier, as will occur this weekend, is larger than the boost in spending that occurs in the spring.
Most critical, however, is the clear downshift in the standard of living in my adopted home region, greater Los Angeles. Once L.A. was full of high-wage jobs, many of them tied to aerospace and manufacturing, as well as high-end business services. Those industries have been eroding for well over a decade, replaced, in large part, by lower-wage positions in hospitality, retail and health. Now it is one of the poorest big cities in America, yet one with extraordinarily high costs, particularly for housing. The cost of living in LA is 46 percent above the national average, driving real wage from a respectable nominal average $59,000 to a dismal adjusted $40,400.
“That fact illustrates another unknown. Even if California can approach the new 2030 goal, no one knows whether the state’s economy can absorb its costs without suffering. . . the anti-carbon program really didn’t get cranked up until a few years ago, so its economic effects, positive or negative, are not yet known. The impacts of the 2030 reduction goal are a complete mystery. Reports by emission reduction advocates have claimed big increases in jobs and other economic activity from shifting to a low-carbon economy, but they have, in the main, been merely shifts rather than expansions, and some job claims are entirely bogus.”
Data released Friday showed that core inflation, which excludes food and energy, reached a two-year high of 1.7% in the third quarter, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. Other data found stirrings of wage acceleration.
In a new McKinsey Global Institute report, A tool kit to fix California’s housing gap: 3.5 million homes by 2025, we look specifically at the US state of California and offer remedies for fixing a chronic housing shortage. Our objective is to provide rigorous, fact-based analysis on a charged issue, and to present a practical blueprint for how cities, state authorities, the private sector, and citizens can work together to unlock housing supply and ensure housing access.
Yet California’s public-pension problem is what really drives many of these campaigns. State and local pensions are deeply in debt because of the generous giveaways elected officials have offered government workers. While the money for the taxes isn’t directly dedicated for pensions, new tax revenue can free up funds to cover local governments’ obligations to the state retirement system.