Robert Tillman owns a coin-operated laundromat in San Francisco’s Mission District, a neighborhood at the epicenter of California’s housing crisis. Over the last 2½ years, he’s spent nearly $500,000 on plans to tear down the business to build apartments. But although the city has zoned the property for apartments, Tillman hasn’t gotten very far.
Growth averaged 3% between 1980 and 2007. Since then it has averaged 1.2%. That suggests the economy’s underlying potential growth rate—what’s possible with the available work force and its productivity—has downshifted. That has left the economy 11% smaller than what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office thought, before the recession, would be achievable by now.
So far this year, half a dozen Republican-dominated state legislatures—including in Alabama, Arizona and North Carolina—have passed so-called pre-emption bills that ban Democratic-leaning cities from raising wages and mandating benefits such as sick leave above state or federal minimums. A half-dozen similar measures are pending in statehouses nationwide with more expected later this year.
In many other countries, however — including countries in much hotter climates — air conditioning is still a relative rarity. But as these countries boom in wealth and population, and extend electricity to more people even as the climate warms, the projections are clear: They are going to install mind-boggling amounts of air conditioning, not just for comfort but as a health necessity.
The results of last week’s quarterly auction were posted and revealed that instead of the $500-plus million expected from the sale of state-owned allowances, the state will get only about $10 million, less than 2 percent.
Another way to think about what an 0.8 percent lower growth rate means is to consider that from the trough of the Great Recession in 2009 when real U.S. GDP had fallen to $14.335 trillion until the first quarter of this year when it was $16.492 trillion implies a growth rate of 2.02 percent annually. If the growth rate had actually been 2.82 percent, U.S. GDP now would $17.415 trillion, about $1 trillion more than it is. If growth had increased at 3.4 percent per year (the 1990s rate) since 2009, U.S. GDP would now be $18.115 trillion.
Still, trade plays a vital role in California’s economy. The state’s seaports, airports and border crossings with Mexico are not only major conduits for America’s trade with the world, they provide employment for armies of blue-collar workers who might otherwise find themselves economically disenfranchised in an increasingly high-tech California. . . Instead of focusing on foreign travel, state leaders should be more concerned with more elemental matters – such as why it currently costs more to haul a shipping container by truck the 90 miles from Sacramento to the Port of Oakland than it does to ship that container 6,200 miles across the Pacific to Shanghai.
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But typically when people talk about the sharing economy or gig economy, they’re talking about platforms that allow people to rent out rooms in their homes, or use their cars to give people rides or deliver groceries. And for now, these are much less common. Only 15% of adults have used ride-hailing services, like those offered by Uber and Lyft. Only 6% have ever had their groceries delivered, and only 4% have hired someone online to perform errands and tasks. . . Three-quarters are not familiar with the term “sharing economy” and 89% are unfamiliar with the term “gig economy.”
Now, though, a growing number of experts, environmentalists and farmers themselves see their fields as a powerful weapon in the fight to slow climate change, their very soil a potentially vast repository for the carbon that is warming the atmosphere. Critically for an industry that must produce an ever-larger bounty to feed a growing global population, restoring lost carbon to the soil also increases its ability to support crops and withstand drought.
“Hopefully, the supply is going to bring down the cost,” Brown said. “Otherwise, through subsidies and through restrictions, we’re just spending more and more tax dollars and getting very, very little.”
“It is counterproductive to continue providing funding for housing under a system which slows down approvals in areas already vetted and zoned for housing, which only delays development and increases costs,” the revised budget states.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s recently released International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016) projects that world energy consumption will grow by 48% between 2012 and 2040. Most of this growth will come from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including countries where demand is driven by strong economic growth, particularly in Asia. Non-OECD Asia, including China and India, accounts for more than half of the world’s total increase in energy consumption over the projection period.
Under Senate Bill 269, small businesses with less than 50 employees would have time to fix access violations. Small businesses can hire a Certified Access Specialist (CASp) and would have 120 days to fix any violations. If the business was being sued, they would have 15 days to address those violations. The legislation also requires local governments to inform businesses of changing ADA laws.
Despite the urgency to cut greenhouse gas emissions as climate change bears down on the globe, fossil fuel use is not likely to change much in the coming decades. Though renewable energy will grow quickly though 2040, gasoline and diesel will still move most of the world’s vehicles, and coal will still be the largest single source of carbon emissions.
But a state’s talent pool can only take it so far. Few states are blessed with as benevolent a climate and a first-rate university system as California, yet it is consistently ranked last each year by CEOs. In 2014, it topped New York for the largest out-migration of people. Much of the reason lies with the perception that Sacramento has a hostile attitude toward business.