Few would doubt that California’s single most important economic/political issue is a growing housing shortage which distresses millions of Californians and is the largest single factor in the state’s highest-in-the-nation poverty rate. The state says we need to be building 180,000 new housing units each year to keep up with population growth, replace housing that’s […]
To Moenius, the rise of robots in warehouses, factories and fast-food restaurants presents danger for places like the Inland Empire, where most residents work in logistics and the service industry and just 21% of adults have a four-year degree. As technology transforms the nature of work in California, how do people most at risk find […]
In California, squatters can claim legal title to someone else’s property through an arcane legal procedure known as “adverse possession.” The law, enacted in 1872, originally was meant for abandoned rural properties that had gone fallow. In modern times, it’s mostly cited when there is a dispute over property lines. However, squatters can use it […]
The best available evidence about the potential effects of these programs comes from the federal government’s “negative income tax” experiment. The experiment, which ran from 1968 to 1980, consisted of four random, controlled trials across six states designed to test the negative income tax. Similar to the universal basic income, a negative income tax guarantees […]
In the imaginations of its boosters, and for many outside the state, California is often seen as the role model for the future. But, sadly, California is also moving backward toward a more feudal society. Feudalism was about the concentration of wealth and power in a relative handful of people. Historically, California created fortunes for […]
If you add up all the voter approved new taxes in November 2016, state and local, you have to include not only $5.0 billion in new local taxes and payments on local bonds per year, you also have to add the voter approved statewide measures. That would include Prop. 51, adding yet another $9.0 billion […]
Cities have been hit the hardest by increases in mandatory payments to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) as it tries to shrink its large “unfunded liability.” City officials have repeatedly complained about the specter of insolvency if pension payments continue to grow and the League of California Cities has labeled the situation “unsustainable.” […]
With increased tax revenue and economic growth, why are local governments asking voters to approve more taxes? A report by the League of California Cities notes that city pension costs will increase more than 50 percent by the fiscal year 2024-25, and will reach “unsustainable levels.” The report states: “Often, revenue growth from the improved […]
Californians paid some $1 billion in taxes above official projections during the first three months of the state’s fiscal year, in what could be a major boost to the government’s bottom line once Gov. Jerry Brown leaves office in January. A monthly report issued Tuesday by the state Department of Finance attributed most of the […]
The USA is now a net exporter of crude oil, with crude oil exports exceeding imports. This oil boom is beneficial to 49 states, but not to California. The American shale boom has important security implications as well, as America is now less dependent on crude oil from the turbulent Middle East, again, except for […]
Consumers who wanted to apply a full federal tax credit to buying a $35,000 Tesla Model 3 sedan appear to be out of luck. The electric-car maker said on its website that orders placed by Monday will be delivered by the end of 2018 and therefore are eligible for the full $7,500 federal tax credit. […]
As Reason chronicled in a feature story in our July 2016 issue, the real world impact of the unionization drive, the lawsuits, and the $15 minimum wage has been mainly to push car washes to automate and to close down. Two years later, there are more unintended consequences. The $15 minimum wage is fostering a […]
Commentators and political factions blame these labor market problems on everything from bad trade deals, to declines in manufacturing jobs, to corporate greed, to outsourcing, to an uncompetitive tax and regulatory environment, to lax immigration policy. But there is another contributing factor that receives less attention: the weaknesses of secondary, postsecondary, and job-training systems in […]
California may be famous for its wealth, but there is a distinctly different part of the state where poverty prevails: places like this one halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Central Valley has long been short on resources no matter which political party is in power. Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress have […]
American employers had more than seven million unfilled jobs for the first time on record this summer, reflecting a historically tight labor market that is causing some businesses to struggle to find workers. There were a seasonally adjusted 7.136 million job openings on the last business day of August, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That […]