The real losers will be the middle and working classes in Europe, America and East Asia, who will continue to struggle with low growth rates, diminished incomes and reduced prospects for gainful employment. The outlines of this divide, even during relatively good times, are already clearly discernible in California.
Whether the Department of Labor exemption is legal could be an unsettled issue. But even if it’s legal, it’s just one of many hurdles that the Secure Choice board must clear to create a system that can deliver meaningful benefits to its mostly low- and moderate-income beneficiaries, avoid the investment losses that have plagued public-sector pension plans, and shield employers and taxpayers from liabilities.
Yet, while California’s aggressive climate change policymaking hasn’t yielded dividends in CO2 emission reduction, it has produced the expected downsides – making energy more expensive. For instance, California’s all sector average electricity price in September 2015 was almost 60% higher than the rest of the nation’s average price and California’s average regular gasoline price was 33% above the national average (without California) as of November 30th. Policy decisions always have trade-offs. Those trade-offs need to be understood and debated because when looking at the facts, it becomes clear that California’s war on climate change is more rhetoric than results.
More recently, research has identified serious consequences to national economies, beyond the fact that many households cannot afford to live, much less buy a home in the metropolitan areas with excessive land use regulation. Because residents such area have less income to spend due to the higher house costs, job creation and economic growth are hobbled. Rising inequality is also being cited as a consequence of excessive land use regulation.
The Newhall Ranch development near Santa Clarita – which was approved 12 years ago and would house nearly 60,000 people – was dealt a stunning setback Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Los California Supreme Court rejected its 5,800 page environmental impact report because it did not address greenhouse gas emissions and how a little fish, the unarmored threespine stickleback, would be protected.
In response to a question posed annually in the fourth quarter, CEOs, once again, reported that regulation was the top cost pressure facing their businesses, followed by labor costs and health care costs.
Beyond the questions for business and taxpayers there is the cloud of politics that sits over the Secure Choice program. Public labor unions, battered by criticisms of over-generous retirement plans that eat deeply into government budgets, embraced the Secure Choice program. For the unions, enlarging a retirement system that is overseen by the public sector could mean more sympathetic allies in the private sector in the battle over reform of current pension policies.
It also means that utility ratepayers could end up overpaying for clean electricity to meet the state’s benchmark because lawmakers, by excluding rooftop solar, left out the source of more than a third of the state’s solar power.
Businesses that can’t afford to buy pollution credits, and can’t find ways to economically reduce emissions, are sometimes forced to close down.
She plans to amend and revive stalled legislation guaranteeing double Thanksgiving pay so it would only apply to workers at large retail businesses that have more than 500 employees in California.
Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown’s top aide, Nancy McFadden, when asked about the administration’s on-the-record opposition to efforts to raise the minimum wage, pointed out that a $15 minimum wage comes with a multi-billion price tag for state government.
After the minimum wage ordinance was approved, LoGuercio invested in a $150,000 industrial dishwasher he had been eyeing to save on utility costs. The machine will also allow him to stop paying six to eight people who earn $10 to $11 an hour washing dishes. LoGuercio expects to recoup his costs in nine months, and save a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year going forward.
White House economic advisers have produced a steady diet of white papers this year to spotlight the puzzle of sluggish productivity, which economists want a better handle on because it helps explain why incomes for the broad middle class aren’t rising. Their latest target: land-use restrictions.
The giant $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar plant off Interstate 15 just west of the California-Nevada border has apparently won its fight with state regulators and won’t be classified as a heavy polluter that is required to buy carbon-emissions rights in the state air board’s cap-and-trade program.
So far, these carbon auctions have yielded the state of California approximately $2.8 billion in revenue, said CARB spokesman David Clegern. Half of that money goes to utility companies to offset electricity costs, and the other half is spent on an array of programs intended to help clean California’s air.