A new study shows that about 9,000 companies left California in the last seven years to reduce costs and improve prospects of growing their businesses. The report provides details about disinvestments by company name, ranks the popularity of the destination states and cities, and outlines the difficulties of doing business in California.
In Section 1 of this paper, we argue that the challenge facing the middle class is less about fundamental economic unfairness—but fundamental change due to globalization and technology coupled with a country, a workforce, and a set of institutions that are simply not ready for this new economy. Moreover, we show that the narrative of fairness has demonstrably failed to excite voters, with three consecutive losing performances with the middle class—leaving Democrats with the fewest number of officeholders since 1928. In Section 2, we propose an ambitious and actionable Democratic agenda that would generate economic growth that directly benefits the middle class through over 70 policy ideas that create more skills, more jobs, and more wealth.
Because fundamental changes in attitudes and behaviors are critical, the group is urging researchers and scholars to come together with community and religious leaders to create a culture of climate action to take concrete steps toward solving our shared climate crisis.
. . . economists across the ideological spectrum have paid little attention to the links between household family structure and the macroeconomic outcomes of nations, states, and societies. This is a major oversight because, as this report shows, shifts in marriage and family structure are important factors in states’ economic performance, including their economic growth, economic mobility, child poverty, and median family income.
The 2006 standards helped to create a sharp drop in the number of air conditioning shipments. The agency anticipated a slight drop of 130,000 shipments. Instead, shipments declined by more than 1.55 million, according to agency and industry estimates. Thus, the energy required for residential cooling use likely didn’t decline as expected between 2007 and 2010; it increased.
A product of the research partnership between the Orange County Business Council, County of Orange, and Orange County Workforce Investment Board (OCWIB), the Workforce Indicators Report examines the growth of industry and employment, salary and wage trends, demographic changes and the educational attainment of Orange County students.
“California’s ratio of debt service to General Fund revenues was 6.84 percent in 2014-15. . . The STO estimates this ratio will be 6.79 percent in 2015-16.”
“In 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced “energy poverty”—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.”
“Following a 3.0% increase in 2014, nonfarm jobs are expected to grow by 2.9% in 2015, and then slow slightly to 2.4% in 2016. The unemployment rate stood at 6.3% in July and is expected to decline to 5.8% in 2016. With further improvements anticipated for the labor market, personal income and total taxable sales should increase by 4.9% and 4.5% respectively this year, with similar or better gains in 2016.”
A new study released today from UT’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy indicates that the gap between government fuel economy estimates and what consumers are reporting has increased for recent model year vehicles.
Total cost of compliance across all institutions in the study was found to vary between 3 percent and 11 percent of each institution’s FY2014 operating expenditures, with a median value of 6.4 percent (Exhibit 4). This variation in overall compliance was found to be driven by two key factors: 1) presence and extent of research at the institution; and 2) scale of expenditures at the institution.
We examine the consequences of underreporting of transfer programs for prototypical analyses of low-income populations using the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics. We link administrative data for food stamps, TANF, General Assistance, and subsidized housing from New York State to the CPS at the individual level. Program receipt in the CPS is missed for over one-third of housing assistance recipients, 40 percent of food stamp recipients and 60 percent of TANF and General Assistance recipients. Dollars of benefits are also undercounted for reporting recipients, particularly for TANF, General Assistance and housing assistance. We find that the survey data sharply understate the income of poor households. Underreporting in the survey data also greatly understates the effects of anti-poverty programs and changes our understanding of program targeting. Using the combined data rather than survey data alone, the poverty reducing effect of all programs together is nearly doubled while the effect of housing assistance is tripled. We also re-examine the coverage of the safety net, specifically the share of people without work or program receipt. Using the administrative measures of program receipt rather than the survey ones often reduces the share of single mothers falling through the safety net by one-half or more.
The evaluation was funded by a grant from the U. S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (R305E090009). It was designed to determine whether the children who participate in the TN‐VPK program make greater academic and behavioral gains in areas that prepare them for later schooling than comparable children who do not participate in the program. It is the first prospective randomized control trial of a scaled up state‐funded, targeted pre‐kindergarten program that has been undertaken.
Tax and transfer programs can create significant bonuses and penalties for low- and moderate-income cohabiters with children. We find that federal tax laws can create marriage penalties that reach almost 10 percent of earnings for our hypothetical couples earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year. In contrast, a prototypical couple earning $20,000 a year could receive a marriage bonus in excess of 10 percent of earnings. Because the transfer programs we consider largely treat cohabiting parents the same as married couples, they create neither significant marriage penalties nor bonuses; however, there may be instances in which couples are misclassified and receive transfer benefits as separate households when cohabiting which could lead to marriage penalties from those programs.
This analysis addresses the growing problem of marriage penalties created by the increased size and coverage of means-tested social-welfare benefits. Depending on the relationship between cohabiters (whether or not they have children in common and whether or not they share food or utility expenses) and their combined and relative earnings, getting married can result in bonuses of as much as 11 percent of their combined income or penalties of more than about 32 percent of their combined income.