Fewer U.S. workers are moving around the country to seek new job opportunities, as changing family ties and more openings near home make people less willing to uproot their lives for work. About 3.5 million people relocated for a new job last year, according to U.S. census data, a 10% drop from 3.8 million in […]
The plight of teachers in the half-dozen states who went out on strike over wages last spring resonated across the nation. A near-majority of people now favor raising teachers’ pay — a significant increase over a year ago — according to a poll by the education journal Education Next. An exception, though, is California — […]
Don’t squeeze your kids too hard as you send them off to another school year, because the state of California is already squeezing your kids hard enough to hurt their future. Call it The Great California School Squeeze. The state is stuck in a nasty school funding paradox: Even though our school districts never have […]
The Trump administration is trying a bold new tactic to bring more water to Central Valley farmers — one that could come at the expense of millions of urban Southern Californians. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation served notice to California officials Aug. 17, stating it wants to renegotiate a landmark 1986 […]
Perhaps the most ignored fact in our energy-environment discussion is the non-stop evolution of fossil fuel technologies, energy sources that have now been somehow deemed Public Enemy #1, despite the fact that they supply over 80% of the energy used in the world’s richest economies with the healthiest people. While it’s indeed true that renewables […]
Tesla reported second quarter results earlier this month. Despite losing $718 million during the quarter, Tesla shares rose 16 percent on renewed promises of profitability. Driven by government incentives and mandates, world automakers have announced big electric car introduction plans. But will any electric car firm be able to make money? . . . Plug-in […]
If there’s an award for environmental virtue signaling, California would win the prize. Yet for all the constant self-promotion, shameless grandstanding and endless moralizing, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the impact, and failures, of our current green obsessions. Take the recent fires that Gov. Jerry Brown, predictably and with little evidence, blamed squarely on climate […]
And yet, despite all this, measured productivity growth across the developed economies has slowed. One possible explanation, recently considered by Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, is that while some companies rapidly grasp the new opportunities, others do so only slowly, producing a wide productivity dispersion even within the same sector. But […]
California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, spends billions of dollars every year to support its dozens of climate-change programs but has trouble demonstrating whether the promise of the law that spawned them has been kept. Though a separate state law requires economic analysis of major regulations, there is no requirement for a retrospective review. Environmental authorities […]
Gov. Jerry Brown’s last contract with the state’s highway engineers includes some sweet perks aimed at retaining the longtime road designers, planners and project managers who’d be charged with executing work funded by the gas tax he backed last year. Brown struck a two-year agreement with Professional Engineers in California Government that includes general wage […]
Only half of California’s families will be able to find a spot in a preschool for their children when school begins, but at Twin Rivers Unified many of the seats are going unclaimed. Many districts say it’s the stringent state and federal income eligibility requirements that are keeping students away from preschool and leaving seats […]
Germany, the nation that did more than any other to unleash the modern renewable-energy industry, is likely to fall short of its goals for reducing harmful carbon-dioxide emissions even after spending over 500 billion euros ($580 billion) by 2025 to overhaul its energy system. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is grappling with the implications of failing […]
Electric vehicles offer the promise of reduced environmental externalities relative to their gasoline counterparts. We combine a theoretical discrete-choice model of new vehicle purchases, an econometric analysis of the marginal emissions from electricity, and the AP2 air pollution model to estimate the environmental benefit of electric vehicles. First, we find considerable variation in the environmental […]
Construction on a massive Sacramento corporate center believed to be the West Coast headquarters of a Fortune 500 health care company will likely start in a few weeks after a construction workers’ union dropped its appeal of the project Monday. LIUNA Local 185 had appealed the planning commission’s approval of the corporate center at East […]
The state agency in charge of regulating harmful chemicals in food and other products recently stated that coffee poses no significant risk of cancer. The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has proposed updating California regulations accordingly following a public hearing in Sacramento on Thursday. The move would constitute a reversal of a court […]