The second-longest bull market in American history hasn’t stopped the deterioration of state and local pension funds, whose unfunded debt has almost quadrupled—by their own accounting—from about $360 billion in 2007 to $1.4 trillion today. Having relied on overly optimistic and inaccurate financial assumptions for decades, public pension administrators are now forced to acknowledge that […]
Very quietly, CalPERS officials told its governing board last month that the trust fund actually lost 3.9 percent during 2018, apparently due to the sharp stock market decline late in the year, pushing its funded level back down to about 67 percent. Having just two-thirds of the assets needed to cover pension promises should be […]
The 2019 report, prepared by Beacon Economics, shows that creative industries throughout the state support 2.6 million jobs, $227.8 billion in labor income and $604.9 billion in annual economic output. One million of those jobs represent workers directly employed in creative industries and the other 1.6 million are jobs indirectly generated by those sectors. When […]
Employees who are required to stay “on call” before the start of a possible work shift — phoning their employer two hours before the shift to learn whether they’re needed — are entitled to be paid for that two-hour period regardless of whether they’re called in to work, a state appeals court ruled Monday. In […]
California policymakers are committed to making sure that electric vehicles — and the charging stations and other infrastructure needs associated with them — transform the state’s transportation sector. But it won’t come cheaply. A review conducted by the San Diego Union-Tribune showed various state agencies have committed $2.46 billion in public funds — some of […]
We document the falling socioeconomic status of American households without private vehicles and the continuing financial burden that cars present for low-income households that own them. We tie both these trends to the auto-orientation of America’s built environment, which forces people to either spend heavily on cars or risk being locked out of the economy. […]
One major goal outlined by the resolution: overhauling the country’s transportation systems, so that electric vehicles, public transit, and high-speed rail can replace every combustion-engine vehicle. In many ways, that’s a summation of every eco-conscious urbanist’s dreams. Transportation produces the largest share of U.S. greenhouse gases, so everything should be done to reduce the globe-cooking […]
The headline trumpeted “Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others,” in a 2000 edition of The Onion, the leading national satirical newspaper. The spoof suggested a national transit promotional campaign with the slogan “Take The Bus… I’ll Be Glad You Did,” and quoted a Los Angeles 80 mile daily commuter “Expanding […]
Despite millions of dollars spent on new bike lanes and other transit improvements, people still favor cars when it comes to commuting in and around San Francisco, a new report by the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency concludes.
Gig worker or employee? California will wrestle with that question this year with efforts under way in Sacramento to either codify or limit a groundbreaking state Supreme Court decision issued in April. The ruling, in a suit brought by delivery drivers at Dynamex, made it harder for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors. It […]
A new study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows how Germany, between 2006 and 2017, increased the cost of electricity for households by 34%. The report, “The Costs of Decarbonization,” documents how the German government made electricity expensive by requiring consumers to subsidize solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. […]
The SWAG Program has a funding stream that has been missing. There are 39,000 small manufacturers in California who have 20 or less employees and employers don’t have the resources or the time to invest in an apprenticeship program. But investments by the California Community Colleges and its Strong Workforce Program, as well as other […]
After Cuomo complained, the Wall Street Journal reported that Florida is, indeed, seeing a new wave of well-to-do transplants from New York, New Jersey and other high-taxing states, sparking a real estate boom. So what about California and neighboring Nevada, which, like Florida and Texas, doesn’t have a state income tax? The Wall Street Journal […]
A growing list of public officials in high-tax states are expressing alarm that big earners are bolting to low-tax states as new data suggests some home buyers are moving in response to the year-old change in the federal tax law. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo became the latest on Monday when he blamed a $2.3 […]
As California has rebounded from the Great Recession, the Imperial Valley has largely defied attempts to expand its economy beyond seasonal farming and government work, and the county continues to suffer the highest unemployment rates in the state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest five-year estimate, Imperial County’s unemployment rate stands at 16% — […]