California needs energy and water equally, and residents are being asked to cut back on both. The state is leading the nation in setting goals for increasing production of renewable-energy sources but has relied on natural gas for the bulk of its energy production.
Federal tax rules span about 75,000 pages today, which is three times more than when President Jimmy Carter called the code “a disgrace to the human race.” The problem is that Congress micromanages us with ever more tax credits, deductions and exemptions for education, energy, health care, saving, working and other activities. . . The IRS guide for the earned income tax credit is 37 pages long, and the rules are so complicated that the credit’s error rate is 27%, according to the IRS. That amounts to $18 billion of mistakes every year for just for this one credit.
Continuing his recent embrace of liberal-backed policies to put more money in workers’ pockets, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed legislation boosting the compensation of Californians taking paid family leave. . . Raising the rate would allocate an additional $348 million in 2018 and $587 million by 2021 out of the state’s Disability Insurance Fund.
Over the past five years, rents in cities with the most-restrictive land use regulations grew almost three times as quickly as in cities with the least-restrictive regulations. Controlling for changes in demand, more-regulated cities experienced a larger drop in inventory than less-regulated cities. Tightly regulated cities with higher rents and lower inventory have more adults living with roommates.
This is the time of year when water utilities set their rates, which almost inevitably go up. But this year, the rate hikes are likely to be higher than usual, as water utilities cope with the unexpected impact of mandatory conservation on their budgets. . . In 1990, water was sold for $222 per acre-foot by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides about half the water used in San Diego County. For 2016, the price was nearly $1,000 an acre-foot.
Misson thought the problem was resolved, so he was shocked when he received a demand for a $25,000 settlement, which would only get higher if he didn’t pay it immediately. That’s when Misson first learned about Scott Johnson, owner of Disabled Access Prevents Injury Inc. Johnson has filed thousands of ADA lawsuits across Northern California for what experts say is millions of dollars in settlements and attorney fees. . . “A disproportionate number of businesses sued by Scott Johnson are … owned by immigrants and minorities,” Welch said. “The protection racket plays well with immigrant businessmen unfamiliar with the American legal system.”
When Los Angeles City Council members voted two years ago to give hotel workers a raise, Bill Martinez was the type of worker they said they wanted to help. . . He soon found out he wouldn’t be getting a raise after all. Under an obscure provision of the city’s wage hike, unionized hotels were granted an exemption allowing them to pay their employees less. The result is that Martinez, who pays $56.50 every month for membership in the hotel workers union Unite Here, now makes less than those doing the same job in non-union workplaces.
Treating workers as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded is a central part of the revised relationship between employers and employees that techies proclaim is an innovation as important as chips and software. The model originated in Silicon Valley, but it’s spreading. Old-guard companies are hiring “growth hackers” and building “incubators,” too. They see Silicon Valley as a model of enlightenment and forward thinking, even though this “new” way of working is actually the oldest game in the world: the exploitation of labor by capital. . . The Netflix code has been emulated by countless other companies, including HubSpot, which employed a metric called VORP, or value over replacement player. This brutal idea comes from the world of baseball, where it is used to set prices on players.
“A California governor is asked to sign historic, far-reaching legislation that could have unknown consequences — and tells the Legislature he will only go along if there is an escape clause that can be used if the law causes economic mayhem. That’s what happened in 2006 when Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with legislative leaders to shape Assembly Bill 32, the landmark law forcing a shift to cleaner, costlier sources of energy. And it’s what happened in the last month with Jerry Brown and the bill increasing the state’s minimum wage steadily until it reaches $15 an hour in 2022, which Brown signed Monday.”
“Gov. Jerry Brown will sign legislation Monday increasing California’s paid family leave benefits for people who take time off to bond with a new child or care for a sick relative, his office said Friday. . . The state’s Economic Development Department estimates increased payments of $348 million in that first year, rising to $587 million by 2021.
In an even more recent analysis for the Federal Reserve, Neumark asked how effective raising the minimum wage is at reducing poverty among those low-wage workers who remain employed. He found that if wages were simply raised to $10.10 per hour, as favored by President Barack Obama, with no changes to the number of jobs or hours, only 18 percent of the total increase in incomes would go to workers in families living in poverty. . . How can that be? Neumark points out that the relationship between being a low-wage worker and being in a low-income family is fairly weak. First, in 57 percent of poor families, no one has a job, so no one gets any wages at all. Second, other workers have low incomes because they work low hours, not because they have low wages. Neumark notes that 46 percent of poor part-time workers have hourly wages above $10.10 and 36 percent above $12 per hour. Finally, many low-wage workers are secondary workers who live in well-off families—teens, for example.
A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute finds that the U.S. could add $2.1 trillion to the nation’s gross domestic product in less than two decades if states made varying strides to raise women’s rate of labor force participation, increase the number of hours they work and spread them into more-productive job sectors.
Second, there are many union contracts which include automatic pay increases tied to changes in the minimum wage. Thus, many workers who already earn more than $15 per hour will still get raises thanks to these laws. For example, California teachers have a contract that ties starting pay to twice the minimum wage, meaning that once the new California law is fully effective in 2022 all public school teachers in the state will earn over $30 per hour.
In effect, the fight for $15 is a by-product of giving up – capitulating on the idea that better opportunities can be created than the menial service jobs that increasingly are the only opportunities for the urban poor. Higher wages will make these jobs moderately more tolerable, while further cementing the wide gulf between the haves and have knots.
Since 2008, the CalChamber has identified bills that will encourage employers to invest resources back into the economy and local communities rather than spend them on unnecessary government-imposed costs.