Teacher collective bargaining is a highly debated feature of the education system in the US. This paper presents the first analysis of the effect of teacher collective bargaining laws on long-run labor market and educational attainment outcomes, exploiting the timing of passage of duty-tobargain laws across cohorts within states and across states over time. Using […]
If you’re looking for the most accurate view of economic growth, you won’t find it in the government’s top-line statistics. Last month the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised its estimate for the first quarter of 2018; the BEA now says gross domestic product grew 2%, annualized, down from the previous figure of 2.2%. This dramatically […]
The concept of a universal basic income, or UBI, has become part of the moral armor of Silicon Valley moguls who want a socially conscious defense against the charge that technology is making humanity obsolete. The logic of UBI runs that if every adult received $12,000 annually in free, unfettered cash, then we would not […]
Yes, California has much to celebrate. We are home to the most formidable tech companies on the planet with half of the world’s tech billionaires living in Silicon Valley. State coffers bulge with historic budget surpluses fed by unprecedented revenues. Our economy enjoys utopian levels of unemployment and is ranked as the world’s 5th largest. […]
The individual income tax is one of the main sources of revenue for states, comprising 23.5 percent of total U.S. state and local tax collections in fiscal year 2015, the latest year of data available. The individual income tax ties with the general sales tax as the second largest source of state and local tax […]
At a recent panel on poverty, the Congressional Budget Office made a presentation showing how income and benefit programs interact in ways that can heavily discourage work. The CBO looked at a single parent with one child living in Pennsylvania, and what would happen to her net income — from wages and benefits — as […]
Many of California’s “green” policies may make matters worse. California, for example, does not encourage biomass energy use, though the state’s vast forested areas—some 33 million acres— could provide renewable energy and reduce the excessive emissions from wildfires caused by years of forest mismanagement. Similarly, California greens have been adamant in shutting down nuclear power […]
Under these conditions, California cannot create a successful multi-cultural society. As environmentalist Michael Shellenberger has noted, the way the state applies its “green policies” has transformed California from “the most progressive state” to “the most racist.” Recently, a coalition of hundreds of veteran civil rights leaders sued CARB over selecting greenhouse gas reduction measures that […]
The federal government is well aware of the steep prices Bay Area residents pay when it comes to just getting by. For four-person households in San Mateo, Marin and San Francisco counties, the threshold for “low” income housing bumped up to $117,400 per year according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest […]
Is homo sapiens, in the final analysis, a being incapable of living unless supported by a universal basic income (UBI)? One of the mounting threats to liberty around the globe is that the marvels of technology are vulnerable to being exploited to normalize paternalism and dependency on government. Technology was supposed to enable a cornucopia […]
Middle-income housing affordability is important, because affordable access to quality housing has been pivotal to the democratization of prosperity that occurred in the last century in most high-income nations. Normally, the competitive market has provided middle-income housing without the need for subsidies. Middle-income is different from low – income housing (also called “affordable housing” or […]
We investigate the role of marital patterns in explaining rising income inequality using a structural marriage matching model with unobserved heterogeneity. This allows us to consider both the extensive and intensive margins of the marriage market, i.e. who remains single and who marries whom. Using US data from 1962 to 2017, we show that marital […]
Officially, SCERS aims for retirees to receive their first monthly check 45 days after paperwork is submitted. But metrics released at a recent board meeting show that the average wait time in 2017 was 80 days. To be clear, Stern said, once people are in the system, they don’t experience delays getting money. It’s that […]
The overall economy appears to be growing at a steady pace, but there are potential threats that could affect the United States and California economic outlooks, according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast’s second quarterly report for 2018. The risk of a trade war with one or more of the major U.S. trading partners, the uncertainties […]
As several cities continue their suit against oil companies, The People of the State of California v. BP, Judge William Alsup has boiled the case down to its pivotal question. In March he ordered the legal counsels of both parties to help him weigh “the large benefits that have flowed from the use of fossil […]