Demand for the state’s first round of business tax credits under the new California Competes program far exceeds supply, with applications totaling $559 million for only $30 million in credits available this year.
A contraction in the nation’s economic output in the first quarter again deferred hopes for a sustained pickup in growth, another stumble for a lackluster recovery approaching the end of its fifth year.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2014, the latest stumble for a recovery that has struggled to find its footing since the recession ended almost five years ago.
California’s overall clean economy continues to create new jobs and business opportunities across diverse sectors, ranging from water efficiency and recycling to energy and battery technologies. Between January 2002 and January 2012, employment in California’s Core Clean Economy jumped 20 percent to reach nearly 196,000. During the same time period, jobs in the larger overall state economy grew by two percent
With regard to the 2014-15 budget, we project that if the Legislature adopts the Governor’s May Revision, the state would end 2014-15 with $3 billion in the state’s two budget reserves: the Budget Stabilization Account (BSA) established by Proposition 58 (2004) and the state’s traditional reserve, the Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties (SFEU). This total is roughly $850 million higher than the administration’s estimate for these reserves ($2.1 billion).
Leading the nation in job growth in 2013, Texas likewise added more houses than any other state and is host to seven of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the country, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.
The Lone Star State added about 250,000 jobs last year, about 20,000 ahead of California. About 118,000 housing units went up in Texas in 2013, or 25% of the 467,000 erected nationwide.
The Texas growth has been fueled by expansions in nearly every industry, including technology companies in Austin, financial firms in Dallas and oil drilling operations in the outskirts.
Gov. Jerry Brown said Wednesday that California is a “job creation engine,” defending his administration’s handling of the economy and state budget in a forceful election year speech.
“By Autor’s calculations, if you’d taken all the income gains that flowed to the 1 percent over the last 35 years and redistributed them evenly to everyone else in the economy, that would have delivered an extra $7,100 a year to every household in the bottom 99 percent. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not as much as the growing pay differential between workers who went to college and those who didn’t.
In the last 35 years, he calculates, the so-called college premium – the boost in your paycheck from earning a diploma – increased by $28,000, adjusted for inflation. So if you took that entire increase and redistributed it to non-college workers, you’d be giving them a raise four times the size of the 1 percent redistribution.”
But the Toyota relocation is just an anecdote and does not paint a full picture of what is happening economically in the state – thus, it is unlikely to point to a cure for what ails California. The real solutions to the state’s problems are actually quite simple, but unfortunately don’t appeal to politicians, pundits or lobbyists. Unless something changes in that calculus, the state will continue to legislate largely by anecdote rather than analysis, ultimately failing to help California grow.
Without the dramatic revenue dips or spikes of years past, and with scant new policy proposals, this year’s May Revision was about as exciting as a jar of pudding.
But one number jumped out. By next year, the state expects 11 million Californians – 30% of the population to receive Medi-Cal benefits.
Without the dramatic revenue dips or spikes of years past, and with scant new policy proposals, this year’s May Revision was about as exciting as a jar of pudding.
But one number jumped out. By next year, the state expects 11 million Californians – 30% of the population to receive Medi-Cal benefits.
California’s unemployment rate dropped below 8% last month for the first time in nearly six years as employers put the state on the verge of recovering all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession . . . California’s unemployment rate remains the fourth-highest in the country, behind Rhode Island at 8.3%, Nevada at 8% and Illinois at 7.9%.
Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.
An analysis released this week by real estate site Trulia defines “middle class” in the San Jose metro area as a household earning $94,077 annually — more than double the median income in Miami and $10,000 higher than the San Francisco metro area.
Without quick action by Congress, the U.S. Transportation Department may begin scaling back or halting work on thousands of roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects at the height of the construction season this July, when the nation’s Highway Trust Fund is expected to run dry.