After an unsuccessful legislative effort this year that would have eventually banned the sale of new gas-powered cars in California, Assemblyman Phil Ting returned Monday with a more modest proposal he hopes will move the state toward the same goal. AB40, introduced by the San Francisco Democrat, asks the state Air Resources Board to come […]
The global economic outlook is shifting, which could lead to new turbulence in markets and Washington in 2019. The past year was marked by strong U.S. economic growth, supported by a burst of fiscal stimulus from federal tax cuts and spending increases. That, in turn, underpinned profit growth and the Federal Reserve’s decision to dial […]
Americans continued to abandon passenger cars in November, transitioning rapidly into crossovers, SUVs and pickups as automakers increasingly catered their products to shifting driver preferences. Automakers sold slightly fewer vehicles overall in November, compared with last year, according to analysts’ forecasts, including one from Edmunds.com, which projected auto sales fell 1.3 percent last month, and […]
A national project to replace millions of gasoline-fueled taxis, buses and trucks with new electric models is boosting China’s ambitions to lead the global shift to battery-powered transportation. When it comes to the commercial electric-vehicle market, “China is the only one in the race; it’s all Chinese manufacturers,” said Sandra Retzer, the Beijing-based head of […]
France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike. Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation. The fault line runs between anti-carbon policies and economic growth, and France is a test for the […]
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, will introduce legislation to add to state law a stricter “ABC test” for defining employees. The test, adopted unanimously by the California Supreme Court this spring, threw nearly three decades of legal precedent up in the air and generated intense pushback from the business community. The bill would strengthen […]
Democrats return to the California Capitol on Monday with their strongest political advantage in decades poised to fulfill a huge item on their list of pent-up demands: Vastly expanded access to preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds. Their plan comes with a big price tag, a problem that has doomed past proposals, most recently with outgoing […]
Decades of evidence suggest this premise is correct: Asset ownership generally improves the well-being of families and provides an irreplaceable rung on the ladder to a stable place in the middle class. Even so, the share of households owning a home or other assets has fallen over the last decade, particularly among vulnerable groups like […]
California’s most senior Democrat and most powerful Republican in Washington are teaming up to extend a federal law designed to deliver more Northern California water south, despite the objections of some of the state’s environmentalists. While controversial, the language in their proposal could help settle the contentious negotiations currently underway in Sacramento on Delta water […]
U.S. employers slowed their hiring in November, but wage growth matched the highest rate in nearly a decade and unemployment held at its lowest level in nearly half a century, signs of a strong economy that could be losing some momentum at the end of a banner year. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 155,000 […]
With a state as big, as populous, and as complex as California, quickly summarizing how its economy or state budget works is impossible. Instead, Cal Facts is a visual guide—using a variety of different charts—to the state’s economy, revenues, and major program trends.
California has the highest number of children and highest percentage of children living in poverty of any state in the nation.1 In order to help address additional strategies, in 2017 the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 1520 (Chapter 415, Statutes of 2016) directing the California Department of Social Services to convene The Lifting Children and […]
Employment rates of older men and women in the U.S. have been rising for the past several decades. Over the same period, there have been significant changes in Social Security and private pensions, which may have contributed to this trend. In this study, we examine how the financial incentive to work at older ages has […]
A Stanford University and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) report entitled Getting Down to Facts II comes ten years after an initial look at California’s education system taking into account all the changes over the past decade. Most newsworthy out of the report was the finance item declaring the need for a 38% increase […]
Ultimately the gig economy, even as it uses the latest technology, represents something of a devolution of labor. Although widely associated as “progressive,” the arbiters of the gig economy are, perhaps unconsciously, recreating the conditions that led to the impoverishment of the peasants and mechanics — replaced by slaves — at the end of the […]