The technology-heavy San Francisco Bay Area has almost single-handedly lifted California’s economy and while other regions are better off than they were during the depths of the recession, their recoveries have been more sluggish.
Carbon emissions from U.S energy sources in 2016 are expected to be the lowest in nearly 25 years, according to an analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy. . . Most of the increase in renewable power came from wind energy, but hydroelectric power also increased as drought conditions lessened on the West Coast.
And the printed version of the Federal Register, the daily depository of all things regulatory, has topped off at 97,110 pages, by far an all time record. . . That dwarfs last year’s count of 80,260 pages, and it shatters the 2010 all-time record of 81,405 by 15,705 pages
Minimum wages will increase in 20 states at the start of the year, a shift that will lift pay for millions of individuals and shed light on a long-running debate about whether mandated pay increases at the bottom do more harm or good for workers.
“Lithium is a pretty abundant element naturally,” Jamie Speirs, a fellow in energy analysis and policy at Imperial College London, told CNBC via telephone. But, though worldwide production of the metal is increasing year on year, he detailed that “the current supply chain will not match up with lithium demand by, say, 2040.” . . . “China has a stranglehold on lithium production,” Speirs said. “Well organised and professionally run mining companies” make this enterprise profitable, he added.
The tech sector and professional services of the United States are world class; they draw skilled workers from every country, akin to professional European football teams. The same could be said of top universities in the United States. But the rest of the economy — especially the U.S. healthcare and education sectors — are not world class, and the country’s top universities serve just a tiny fraction of the U.S. adult population. These sectors — as well as housing — have racked up tremendous expenses for consumers, businesses and taxpayers but provided relatively little value in return, as this report will describe in detail. As a result, the great strengths of the United States are offset by great weaknesses.
“Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads. While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses,” said Gov. Ducey.
Employers in California can’t keep their workers on call during short rest breaks and must give up any control over how they spend that time, the state Supreme Court said Thursday in a case that pitted labor activists against business groups.
Defenders of California’s status-quo claim to be proud of California’s economic growth and worry about what Trump will do to that growth. If you are so impolite as to mention that this has been California’s slowest recovery in 70 years, as the following chart shows, you will be told that slow growth is good. . . That’s nonsense. Slow growth is anti-poor and anti-minority. Here’s a simple way to analyze economic policy: Ask how the policy changes the probability of a young person finding a job. If the policy increases their chances, it’s good policy. If it decreases the probability, it’s bad policy.
U.S. consumer spending increased modestly in November as household income failed to rise for the first time in nine months, suggesting the economy slowed in the fourth quarter after growing briskly in the prior period.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday issued its final revision for third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP). According to the BEA, U.S. GDP rose at an inflation-adjusted and seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5%, higher than the October estimate of 2.9% and the November estimate of 3.2%.
The average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was $2.719 a gallon as of Thursday, a 17-cent drop from a year earlier, the Auto Club said in its weekly fuel report.
California again scored just behind Massachusetts, which gained ground by churning out more science and engineering graduates and producing jobs in those industries even though it had less technology company density than in 2015, according to the data compiled by Bloomberg.
The collaboration with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness—which describes itself as a nonprofit, bipartisan group of labor, corporate and university leaders—tracks health, education and housing costs and outcomes from 1980 to 2014. It finds combined spending in these three areas has ballooned from 25% to 40% as a share of GDP since 1980, without commensurate improvements in quality.
In recent days, Obama has unveiled five major “midnight” regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, a report from the American Action Forum (AAF) shows. Alone, these new rules will cost about $5.1 billion a year and require at least 350,000 hours of paperwork from companies. In addition, three other lesser rules will add an estimated $898 million to the regulatory tab, and another 146,000 hours of paperwork. The bottom line: These new rules that Obama is making the law of the land with little fanfare and no input from Congress will cost us $6 billion a year and nearly half a million hours of paperwork. We pay for these, by the way, not companies. The impact of this kind of rule-making is cumulative. Since 2009, when Obama took office, the EPA and Interior have added $349 billion in regulatory costs. As the late, great Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen once supposedly joked, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” That’s where we are now.