Data released Friday showed that core inflation, which excludes food and energy, reached a two-year high of 1.7% in the third quarter, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. Other data found stirrings of wage acceleration.
As an indicator of economic hardship, the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) improves on the official poverty measure by better accounting for regional differences in the cost of living as well as for the various resources (including non-cash benefits like food assistance) that families use to cover expenses.
Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Obama’s healthcare law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. . . Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25% across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Generally, a closely aligned relationship between trends in owner occupied and rented housing costs would be expected . This was certainly true until 1970 (Note 1). In 1949 there was a 135 percent difference between the lowest median household value and the highest in the major metropolitan areas (Note 2). There was a similar 114 percent difference between the lowest gross rent and the highest (Figure 1). The house value variation was 18 percent higher than the rent variation. . . The close relationship between the variations in house value and rent was substantially broken in more recent decades. The 2015 American Community Survey shows that the variation among the major metropolitan areas in median house values is now a staggering 509 percent. The range between the least expensive and most expensive rental markets is a much smaller 158 percent (Figure 3). The difference in the variations between house value and rents across the nation rose to 222 percent, nearly nine times the 1969 figure.
“More than a fifth of American men — about 20 million people — between 20 and 65 had no paid work last year. Seven million men between 25 and 55 are no longer even looking for work, twice as many black men as white. There are 20 million men with felony records who are not in jail, with dim prospects of employment, and more of these are black men. Half the men not in the labor force report they are in bad physical or mental health. Men account for only 42 percent of college graduates, handicapping them in a job market that rewards higher levels of education. “
California’s unrelenting economy refused to slow in September, amassing another 30,000 new jobs even as more people seeking work opted into the labor market, according to state data released Friday. . . “We are adding jobs at the two extremes, in higher paying industries and lower industries. Where we aren’t seeing stronger growth is in the middle,” Vitner said.
Faced with an affordability crisis, mayors across the country have pledged to build thousands more units of housing. But a new analysis shows to meet those targets, many would have to exceed the construction pace reached at the height of the housing boom.
The researchers were attempting to find a series of chemical reactions that could turn CO2 into a useful fuel, when they realized the first step in their process managed to do it all by itself. The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles.
Still, Bauman is deadly serious (sort of) about Washington State Initiative 732, which will appear on the ballot this November, thanks to the efforts of a group that he helped assemble. If it passes, it will impose a carbon tax on fossil fuels in Washington but reduce general taxes by about the same amount. It’s designed to cut consumption of carbon-based fuels in a revenue-neutral way without putting any additional financial burden on state residents. Behind the proposal is Bauman’s notion that our current approach to taxation doesn’t make sense. We tax things that we want more of, like profits and income, and wind up getting less of those things because taxation tends to make them scarcer. Instead, we should tax things that we want less of—and, for Bauman, that means taxing fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse emissions.
On the issue of taxation alone, voters must decide whether to impose a first-in-the-nation carbon tax (Washington), adopt a new income and payroll tax to fund a state public option health care system (Colorado), levy a high-rate gross receipts tax (Oregon), extend temporary income tax increases (California), impose a new high-income surcharge (Maine), legalize and tax marijuana (five states), and hike cigarette taxes (four states), just to name a few of the tax changes on ballots across the country.
The world’s highly skilled immigrants are increasingly living in just four nations: the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, according to new World Bank research highlighting the challenges of brain drain for non-English-speaking and developing countries. . . Despite efforts of non-English-speaking nations to attract high quality workers, almost 75% of the total OECD highly skilled workforce in 2010 lived in the four main Anglo-Saxon countries—almost 40% in the U.S. alone. Around 70% of engineers in Silicon Valley and 60% of doctors in Perth, Australia, were foreign-born in 2010.
Proving that for every action there is a reaction, new business-bashing actions applauded by Gov. Jerry Brown have boosted efforts by other states to recruit California companies to their friendlier locations. . . The representatives are able to project significant operating cost reductions when it comes to labor, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, health care, taxes, facility leases or purchases, regulatory compliance and transportation. Affordable housing in other parts of the country also make it easier for companies to attract and retain employees.
The Labor Department on Tuesday said that consumer prices rose by 0.3% in September from August, putting them 1.5% above their year-earlier level. With gasoline prices stabilizing, annual inflation ought to push above 2% on the year within a couple of months.
A density-only policy tends to raise prices, turning California into the burial ground for the aspirations of the young and minorities. This reflects an utter disregard for most people’s preferences for a single-family home — including millennials, particularly as they enter their 30s. . . Ultimately, the question remains over what urban form we wish to bequeath to future generations. Ours is increasingly dominated by renters shoved into smaller spaces and paying ever more for less.
Here is the lesson: What some economists now call “secular stagnation” might better be termed “ordinary performance.” Most of the time, in most economies, incomes increase slowly, and living standards rise bit by bit. The extraordinary experience of the Golden Age left us with the unfortunate legacy of unrealistic expectations about our governments’ ability to deliver jobs, pay raises and steady growth.