By U.S. state, the largest expenditures, $48.9 billion, were for U.S. businesses in California. The four largest U.S. states in terms of expenditures by foreign direct investors—California, New Jersey, New York, and Texas—together received over half of all new investment. These four states accounted for 35 percent of private industry GDP in the United States in 2014.
Companies appear reluctant to step up spending on the basic building blocks of the economy, such as machines, computers and new buildings. The broadest measure of U.S. business investment advanced 2.2% from a year earlier in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said last week, marking one of the worse performances of the six-year-old economic expansion.
Beyond the questions for business and taxpayers there is the cloud of politics that sits over the Secure Choice program. Public labor unions, battered by criticisms of over-generous retirement plans that eat deeply into government budgets, embraced the Secure Choice program. For the unions, enlarging a retirement system that is overseen by the public sector could mean more sympathetic allies in the private sector in the battle over reform of current pension policies.
It also means that utility ratepayers could end up overpaying for clean electricity to meet the state’s benchmark because lawmakers, by excluding rooftop solar, left out the source of more than a third of the state’s solar power.
The bankruptcies of three cities and high-profile financial scandals in a couple of others demonstrated the operational vulnerabilities of California’s municipalities.
Businesses that can’t afford to buy pollution credits, and can’t find ways to economically reduce emissions, are sometimes forced to close down.
California has the nation’s largest court system, and perhaps its most troubled with severe financial and managerial tangles, and a virtual war between a San Francisco-based administrative superstructure and hundreds of rebellious local judges.
That’s right: The treasury is spilling over, but some unions want to keep collecting income taxes at the highest rate in state history.
The biggest banks in the U.S. are making far fewer loans to small businesses than they did a decade ago, ceding market share to alternative lenders that charge significantly higher rates. . . A prolonged decline in new business formation has reduced the borrowing pool. Plus, banks have been slower to ease lending standards for small firms than for big ones after the recession.
The number of wage and hour cases filed in federal court rose to 8,871 for the year ending Sept. 30, up from 1,935 in 2000. That’s an increase of 358 percent, compared to the the federal judiciary’s overall intake volume, which rose only a total of about 7 percent over the same period.
California got into this pickle because in 2001, when the UIF had a $6.5 billion reserve, the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis decided to boost benefits sharply – nearly doubling them, in fact – without raising payroll taxes to pay for them. The extra benefits reduced the fund balance, leaving it unable to cope with sharp increases in claims for benefits when recession hit the state six years later. It was irresponsible, akin to the big increases in public employee pensions that Davis and legislators also decreed without a plan to pay for them, which also has created a big debt.
Personal income increased $68.1 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $56.8 billion, or 0.4 percent, in October, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $15.2 billion, or 0.1 percent. In September, personal income increased $27.4 billion, or 0.2 percent, DPI increased $27.0 billion, or 0.2 percent, and PCE increased $9.5 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.
Just under 66% of recent high-school grads were enrolled in two- or four-year college programs in 2013, down from 68.6% in 2008, according to research by the American Council on Education, a higher-education industry group.
The Commerce Department on Tuesday said the nation’s gross domestic product grew at a 2.1 percent annual pace, not the 1.5 percent rate it reported last month. It said efforts by businesses to reduce an inventory bloat had not been as aggressive as previously believed.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 90.4 in November, missing estimates for 99.5. It was also lower than October’s reading of 99.1.