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A think tank founded by San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer to find solutions for income inequality in California released a sweeping report Thursday outlining the root causes behind the state’s widening wage gap and how Californians should go about closing it.

The report, produced by the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality in California, represents largely a collection of long-standing liberal policy positions and talking points. Steyer has previously insisted that creating and chairing the commission was not tied to his exploration of a possible 2018 gubernatorial run. But political strategists said it was difficult to divorce the group’s mission statement — and Steyer’s populist projects on issues like high gasoline prices and climate change — from the looming election.

A new economic forecast from the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific shows the economy continues to grow despite an uncertain policy environment. But California should expect slower growth compared to recent years. Non-farm payroll jobs are expected to increase 1.5 percent over the next year, half the pace of the previous four years.

The Fair Shake Commission report is an effort to help build a consensus about how we can come together to meet our common challenges. By coming together to generate ideas to help our working people thrive, we can show the nation and the world that American ideals are still alive and well, and are not bound by race, color, or creed.

This report offers ideas to level the playing field and to create opportunity for all Californians. It is borne from the understanding that a more inclusive, diverse California is key to a stronger future and that more inclusive prosperity leads to more, not less, economic growth.

California legislators have raised fines for traffic infractions to some of the highest in the United States to generate revenue, and the poor are bearing an unfair burden, losing cars and jobs because they cannot pay them, civil rights activists said on Friday.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in every state and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to statistics on the geographic breakout of GDP released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Real GDP by state growth ranged from 3.4 percent in Texas to 0.1 percent in Kansas and Mississippi (table 1 and chart 1). Finance and insurance; retail trade; and professional, scientific, and technical services were the leading contributors to U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter.

Gross domestic product grew at a 0.7% annual rate in the first quarter from the preceding three months, the Commerce Department said Friday. Economic output has grown an average of roughly 2% during the nearly eight-year expansion.

San Francisco and San Mateo counties in the Bay Area have passed a grim milestone reflecting extreme housing costs: The federal government now considers households in the counties which make $100,000 a year to be “low income,” making them eligible for federal housing programs for poor families, most notably Section 8 vouchers that allow more than 2.2 million U.S. families to pay only 30 percent of income toward rent.

“The bottom line: If you see a growing Latino middle class, you will see a growing Latino representation in government,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran political strategist and author of a study by the newly formed California Latino Economic Institute. The CLEI report, which looks into economic as well as political issues, was jointly commissioned by the Legislature’s Latino Caucus and the California Business Roundtable.

The Los Angeles political establishment and media is virtually unanimous in its praise for the now quarter century old rail system. Yet, despite more than $15 billion being spent on rail transit the already meager levels of transit commuting in the city have fallen further, while solo driving has risen to an all time high. Unless platitudes are more important than results, rail’s success is a false narrative. People are driving more and using transit less according to the American Community Survey for 2015.

Social Security and Medicare, the two most established and popular parts of the American welfare state, are increasingly stacked in favor of the already well-off, according to NBER paper from some of America’s leading economists. That’s because the rich have experienced large life expectancy gains over the last few decades, meaning they are eligible for the programs for a longer and longer period of time.

Older Americans have experienced dramatic gains in life expectancy in recent decades, but an emerging literature reveals that these gains are accumulating mostly to those at the top of the income distribution. We explore how growing inequality in life expectancy affects lifetime benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and other programs and how this phenomenon interacts with possible program reforms. We first project that life expectancy at age 50 for males in the two highest income quintiles will rise by 7 to 8 years between the 1930 and 1960 birth cohorts, but that the two lowest income quintiles will experience little to no increase over that time period. This divergence in life expectancy will cause the gap between average lifetime program benefits received by men in the highest and lowest quintiles to widen by $130,000 (in $2009) over this period. Finally we simulate the effect of Social Security reforms such as raising the normal retirement age and changing the benefit formula to see whether they mitigate or enhance the reduced progressivity resulting from the widening gap in life expectancy.

It may turn out that the widespread belief that most Americans’ incomes have stagnated for years is, well, false or at least overstated. . . In a provocative new study, economist Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College reviewed the material well-being of the poorest 50% and 25% of Americans. What he concluded was that even these families had achieved a “meaningful growth in consumption … (despite) a prolonged period of increasing income inequality … and a decreasing share of national income accruing to labor.”

The Blueprint would lead to the creation of roughly 1.7 million new jobs and boost the after-tax incomes of the median household by nearly $5,000. . . California would gain 191,000+ jobs and an estimated gain in after-tax income for median households of $5,536.

The economies of Southern California’s metropolitan areas grew late last year at their slowest pace since 2010, a series of government indexes show.

. . . the Blueprint provides a net $1.6 trillion tax cut for American businesses over the next decade, as scored on a static basis. Thus, businesses in every state will benefit substantially.. . California would gain a business net tax relief of $205 billion. . . According to the TAG model, even accounting for the border adjustment, the Blueprint would boost the long-term level of GDP by 9.1 percent, investment by 28 percent, after-tax incomes by an average of 8.7 percent, and create 1.7 million new jobs.