“Even if the economics of oil favor gasoline, I think the Model 3 still does well,” he said. “It’s more cases where there is little to no differentiation between the gasoline version of something and the electric version. If they’re about the same, and the electric version doesn’t have a compelling economic proposition, then you’ve got a real issue in the market.”
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal rule that calls for payments to businesses, schools and other large energy consumers that reduce their electricity usage at times of peak demand.
Businesses and nonprofit groups have been adjusting to the state’s new $10 minimum wage since it superseded the old minimum wage of $9 an hour on Jan. 1. Some have raised prices or fees. Others have cut back hours. And many are thinking about the increases still to come.
Nearly every major Chinese car maker is churning out electric cars these days in hopes of capitalizing on regulatory largess. . . One suspected strategy involves manufacturers selling faulty or incomplete cars to related parties who pocket the subsidies and then return the cars. That could explain why wholesale shipments of electric cars between January and November were 56% above retail sales, according to LMC Automotive data. By contrast, in the broader car market, wholesale was 6% higher than retail.
But critics warn that California’s adoption of REDD would have far-reaching human rights and environmental consequences. Initial investments by the World Bank and United Nations in REDD have already precipitated violent evictions of indigenous people from their forested homelands in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya — to make way for carbon-saving projects. In fact, countless activists and grassroots organizations regard REDD as a recipe for a global land grab, prompting them to dub it a case of “CO2lonialism.”
Each of the two major lawsuits, introduced within weeks of each other 27 years ago, offers enduring lessons – in law, in politics and in the long, long time it takes to get things done in Washington.
It turns out “emergency drought relief” can take up to two years to distribute. On Wednesday, California regulators awarded the final pieces of the $680 million drought aid package Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers approved in March 2014.
Casa de Tamales in the Tower District is among several valley restaurants which say they have no choice but to raise menu prices. . . Attendance at Fresno’s Chaffee Zoo is on pace for another record-breaking year, but half the staff will be impacted by the minimum wage pay hike. . . CEO Scott Barton said. “For the first time in 12 years in 2016, we are raising the entrance fee to get into the zoo.”
The answer varies by company and industry. For example, Apple is the most profitable company on the Fortune 500. With $39.5 billion in annual profit and about 97,000 employees, Apple’s annual profit per employee is $407,000. . . Apple could absorb a minimum-wage increase easily. . . The situation is far different for America’s retail businesses, where a minimum-wage increase would be most deleterious. Combine every retailer, restaurant, supermarket and retail pharmacy company in the Fortune 500 as a proxy for the retail industry. . . and annual profit per employee of $6,300 (1.5% of Apple’s profit per employee). . . an increase to $9 an hour would result in an annual wage increase of $2,730. . . At $15 an hour, the employee would make $12,090 more a year, resulting in a loss per employee of $5,790.
In a global survey of 40 nations about how concerned people are about climate change, America scored 8.78 on a scale from three to 12, where 12 is the most concerned. The U.S. was tied with the United Kingdom and only Poland, Israel and Australia scored lower, just by a hair.
SolarCity announced plans Wednesday to cease operations in Nevada after regulators drastically cut benefits for retail solar owners.
There’s a simple reason reform always is derailed. “CEQA provides a way for anybody who wants anything out of a public agency to get some leverage over the situation – whether that’s unions, environmentalists, businesses, developers and even local governments themselves,” wrote William Fulton, in a California Planning & Development Report article last year. And no one from any interest group wants to give up leverage.
It is easy to be confused about what effects minimum wages have on jobs for low-skilled workers. Researchers offer conflicting evidence on whether or not raising the minimum wage means fewer jobs for these workers. Some recent studies even suggest overall employment could be harmed. This Letter sheds light on the range of estimates and the different approaches in the research that might explain some of the conflicting results. It also presents some midrange estimates of the aggregate employment effects from recent minimum wage increases based on the research literature.
The reason for such bleak retirement prospects is the disappearance of traditional defined benefit pensions and the failure of 401(k)-type plans to fill the gap. A recent analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that, in 2011, only 14% of private-sector employees participated in a defined benefit pension plan. The participation rate has been falling quite rapidly, so it was almost certainly lower in 2015.
The sharing economy has been under continuous attack since it started to gain traction among consumers. And for one simple reason: it challenges the status quo, which regulators and bureaucrats do not like.