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State taxation of multistate and multinational corporations is not an issue for the fainthearted.

Today is a more extreme test of that divergence from the 1990s. Inflation is even lower, most visibly due to the surprising persistence of low oil prices, but also due to the strong dollar, which is helping make import prices cheaper. Yes, people’s paychecks are growing slowly, but their inflation-adjusted paychecks have been growing at a clip that may even be considered healthy.

Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 292,000 in December, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, obtained through a separate survey, held steady at 5% last month. The unemployment rate hasn’t been below that mark since 2007.

Brown sounded a distinctly sour note on pending ballot measures that would extend taxes on high earners, raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and finance billions in new school construction.

While proposing a $170.7 billion state budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year that begins on July 1, Brown stressed that the plan would continue to fill the rainy-day fund that voters, at his behest, adopted in 2014 as a buffer against a future economic downturn.

Brown called the proposal for a 12-year extension of Proposition 30, a temporary tax that expires in two years “fatally flawed” because it would prohibit diverting any of the money into the state’s rainy day fund for general state spending. Building up that reserve to cushion the impact of the next economic recession is one of Brown’s priorities, and Brown spent much of the press conference warning of the likelihood of another downturn. “If you don’t remember anything else, just remember, everything that goes up comes down,” Brown said. His proposed $122.6 billion general fund budget would add $2 billion to the rainy day fund, bringing the total to $8 billion.

Brown signaled a willingness to negotiate a new minimum wage increase – on top of the one that just took effect – but says the proposal to raise it to $15/hour would cost the state $4 billion.

The value of California’s merchandise exports in November was $12.86 billion, down 13.6 percent from $14.89 billion in November 2014 and the worst November showing since 2009, according to Beacon Economics.

SolarCity has laid off more than 550 employees — about a quarter of its workforce — in Nevada, the company said today.

Annual reports just issued by California’s two largest public pension funds indicate that the state added roughly $24 billion of unfunded public pension liability in fiscal year 2015.

The latest measure of U.S. trade flows from the Commerce Department on Wednesday showed imports and exports hitting their lowest level in years, a double whammy that hints at a domestic slowdown as well as anemic demand for U.S. products abroad.

The aftershocks carried over to Europe and the United States, where markets fell sharply once again. Coming off a sell-off on Wednesday, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 1.3 percent in midday trading, while the Nasdaq dropped 1.6 percent

The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development opened its application period on Monday for $75 million in California Competes tax credits.

In a new study by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, we found that the best cities for middle-class families tend to be located outside the largest metropolitan areas. This was based on such factors housing affordability, migration, income growth, commute times, and middle-income jobs.

If we are serious about exempting “necessities” from taxes, the list will become very long, but if we do it, we should also be willing to do a top-to-bottom overhaul of taxation to close egregious loopholes.