03/28/2024

News

Crime in California 2016

Crime in California, 2016 presents an overview of the criminal justice system in California. Current year statistics are presented for reported crimes, arrests, dispositions of adult felony arrests, adult probation, criminal justice personnel, citizens’ complaints against peace officers, domestic violence- related calls for assistance, and law enforcement officers killed or assaulted. In addition, statistics for preceding years are provided for historical context.

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Good Jobs that Pay without a BA

Although the decline in the manufacturing economy eliminated many good jobs for high school graduates, there are still 30 million good jobs in the U.S. that pay well without a BA. These good jobs have median earnings of $55,000 and are changing from traditional blue-collar industries to skilled-services industries.

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“THE EFFECTS OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT ON HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE AND LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES”

he Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes several provisions designed to expand insurance coverage that also alter the tie between employment and health insurance. In this paper, we exploit variation across geographic areas in the potential impact of the ACA to estimate its effect on health insurance coverage and labor market outcomes in the first two years after the implementation of its main features. Our measures of potential ACA impact come from pre- existing population shares of uninsured individuals within income groups that were targeted by Medicaid expansions and federal subsidies for private health insurance, interacted with each state’s Medicaid expansion status. Our findings indicate that the majority of the increase in health insurance coverage since 2013 is due to the ACA and that areas in which the potential Medicaid and exchange enrollments were higher saw substantially larger increases in coverage. While labor market outcomes in the aggregate were not significantly affected, our results indicate that labor force participation reductions in areas with higher potential exchange enrollment were offset by increases in labor force participation in areas with higher potential Medicaid enrollment

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Do People Respond To The Mortgage Interest Deduction? Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Denmark

Using linked housing and tax records from Denmark combined with a major reform of the mortgage interest deduction in the late 1980s, we carry out the first comprehensive long-term study of how tax subsidies affect housing decisions. The reform introduced a large and sharp reduction in the mortgage deduction for top-rate taxpayers, while reducing it much less or not at all for lower-rate taxpayers. We present three main findings. First, the mortgage deduction has a precisely estimated zero effect on homeownership. This holds even in the very long run. Second, the mortgage deduction has a sizeable impact on housing demand at the intensive margin, inducing homeowners to buy larger and more expensive houses. Third, the largest effect of the mortgage deduction is on household financial decisions, inducing them to increase indebtedness. These findings suggest that the mortgage interest deduction distorts the behavior of homeowners at the intensive margin, but is ineffective at promoting homeownership at the extensive margin and any externalities that may be associated with it.        

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Residential Building Codes Do Save Energy: Evidence From Hourly Smart-Meter Data

In 1978, California adopted building codes designed to reduce the energy used for heating and cooling. Using a rich dataset of hourly electricity consumption for 158,112 California houses, we estimate that the average house built just after 1978 uses 13% less electricity for cooling than a similar house built just before 1978. Comparing the estimated savings to the policy’s projected cost, we conclude that the policy comfortably passes a cost-benefit test.   

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Small Business Tax Index 2017: Best to Worst State Tax Systems for Entrepreneurship and Small Business

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s “Small Business Tax Index 2017” ranks the states from best to worst in terms of the costs of their tax systems on entrepreneurship and small business. This year’s edition of the Index pulls together 26 different tax measures, and combines those into one tax score that allows the 50 states to be compared and ranked.

The 26 measures are: 1) state’s top personal income tax rate, 2) state’s top individual capital gains tax rate, 3) state’s top tax rate on dividends and interest, 4) state’s top corporate income tax rate, 5) state’s top corporate capital gains tax rate, 6) any added income tax on S-Corporations, 7) any added income tax on LLCs, 8) Section 179 expensing conformity, 9) average local personal income tax rate, 10) whether or not the state imposes an alternative minimum tax on individuals, 11) whether or not the state imposes an alternative minimum tax on corporations, 12) whether or not the state’s personal income tax brackets are indexed for inflation, 13) whether or not the state’s corporate income tax brackets are indexed for inflation, 14) the progressivity of the state’s personal income tax brackets, 15), the progressivity of the state’s corporate income tax brackets,16) property taxes, 17) consumption-based taxes (i.e., sales, gross receipts and excise taxes), 18) whether or not the state imposes a death tax, 19) unemployment taxes, 20) whether or not the state has a tax limitation mechanism, 21) whether or not the state imposes an Internet access tax, 22) remote seller taxes, 23) gas tax, 24) diesel tax, 25) wireless taxes, and 26) LLC fees.

The 15 best state tax systems are: 1) Nevada, 2) Texas, 3) South Dakota, 4) Wyoming, 5) Washington, 6) Florida, 7) Alabama, 8) Ohio, 9) North Carolina, 10) Colorado, 11) Arizona, 12) Alaska, 13) Michigan, 14) Indiana, and 15) Utah. The 15 worst state tax systems are: 36) Delaware, 37) Arkansas, 38) Maryland, 39) Nebraska, 40) Kentucky, 41) Connecticut, 42) Oregon, 43) New York, 44) Vermont, 45) Hawaii, 46) Iowa, 47) Minnesota, 48) Maine, 49) New Jersey, and 50) California.

Research & Studies
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Minimum Wage Increases, Wages and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle

This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016.

Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.

Research & Studies
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Goods on the Move: Trade and Logistics in Southern California

LAEDC’s Institute for Applied Economics has released the report, Goods on the Move: Trade and Logistics in Southern California.  The report looks at jobs, wages, economic impact, trends, and factors affecting the future of this major regional industry cluster, which directly employs over half a million people in Southern California. The industry continues to grow, with more jobs being added. While average wages for the industry as a whole are above the LA County average, the individual occupations span a wide range of salaries.  Warehousing experienced a 55% increase in employment during the past ten years, but salaries in that sector have been trending down, and increasing automation is a factor to watch.

Research & Studies
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Goods on the Move: Trade and Logistics in Southern California

LAEDC’s Institute for Applied Economics has released the report, Goods on the Move: Trade and Logistics in Southern California. The report looks at jobs, wages, economic impact, trends, and factors affecting the future of this major regional industry cluster, which directly employs over half a million people in Southern California. The industry continues to grow, with more jobs being added. While average wages for the industry as a whole are above the LA County average, the individual occupations span a wide range of salaries. Warehousing experienced a 55% increase in employment during the past ten years, but salaries in that sector have been trending down, and increasing automation is a factor to watch.

Research & Studies
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Oil & Gas in California: The Industry and Its Economic Impact

The report describes the economic impact of oil and gas industry operations in their entirety in the state of California. It estimates that the industry’s direct output of more than $111 billion generates more than $148  billion in direct economic activity, contributing 2.7 percent of the state’s GDP and supporting 368,100 total jobs in 2015, or 1.6 percent of California’s employment. Additionally, the oil and gas industry generates $26.4 billion in state and local tax revenues and $28.5 billion in sales and excise taxes. Vulnerable user industries of refined petroleum products, like transportation/warehousing, manufacturing and agriculture represent 1.7 million jobs in California with an associated $111 billion in labor income and account for 8.4 percent of the state’s GDP.

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Report of the high-level commission on carbon prices

Efficient carbon-price trajectories begin with a strong price signal in the present and a credible commitment to maintain prices high enough in the future to deliver the required changes. Relatively high prices today may be more effective in driving the needed changes and may not require large future increases, but they may also impose higher, short-term adjustment costs. In the medium to long term, explicit price trajectories may need to be adjusted based on the experience with technology development and the responsiveness to policy. The policy dynamics should be designed to both induce learning and elicit a response to new knowledge and lessons learned. Price adjustment processes should be transparent to reduce the degree of policy uncertainty.

A combination of policies is likely to be more dynamically efficient and attractive than a single policy. These policies could include investing in public transportation infrastructure and urban planning; laying the groundwork for renewable-based power generation; introducing or raising efficiency standards, adapting city design, and land and forest management; investing in relevant R&D initiatives; and developing financial devices to reduce the risk-weighted capital costs of low-carbon technologies and projects. Adopting other cost-effective policies can mean that a given emission reduction may be induced with lower carbon prices than if those policies were absent.

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Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State

Based on federal government data, past reports, and contemporary studies, this report highlights regulatory compliance and economic impacts of federal intervention of $1.9 trillion annually. . . . If it were a country, U.S. regulation would be the world’s seventh-largest economy, ranking behind India and ahead of Italy.

If one assumed that all costs of federal regulation and intervention flowed all the way down to households, U.S. households would “pay” $14,809 annually on average in a regulatory hidden tax. That amounts to 21 percent of the average income of $69,629 and 26.45 percent of the expenditure budget of $55,978. The “tax” exceeds every item in the budget except housing.

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Fair Shake Commission on Inequality in California

The Fair Shake Commission report is an effort to help build a consensus about how we can come together to meet our common challenges. By coming together to generate ideas to help our working people thrive, we can show the nation and the world that American ideals are still alive and well, and are not bound by race, color, or creed.

This report offers ideas to level the playing field and to create opportunity for all Californians. It is borne from the understanding that a more inclusive, diverse California is key to a stronger future and that more inclusive prosperity leads to more, not less, economic growth.

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“Economic Analysis of the Healthy California Single-Payer Health Care Proposal (SB-562)”

There will be two sources of financing for Healthy California. The first is the same public health care revenue sources that are presently providing about 71 percent of all health care funding in the state. These include Medicare and MediCal, which together provide nearly 50 percent of all health care funding in California at present. It also includes tax subsidies for health care expenditures by individuals and households in the state, which provide about 9 percent of the state’s total health care funding. The Healthy California bill is explicit in stating that the State will work to obtain waivers in all of the present areas of public health funding, so that these present funding sources will continue to finance Healthy California. Assum ing the state is successful in obtaining these waivers, these funds will provide $225 billion in funding for the state’s single -payer program. That means that the remaining $106 billion to fund Healthy California will need to be provided by new revenue sources in the state.

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Searching for Opportunity: Examining racial gaps in access to quality schools in California and a list of Spotlight Schools

GreatSchools released a first-of-its-kind look at student achievement and access to educational opportunity broken down by race and ethnicity. The report sheds light on systemic gaps in access to advantages that allow students to succeed in school and prepare for college and career.

The report shows that a stunning 2% of African American and 6% of Hispanic students attend a quality school for their student group based on multiple factors, compared to 59% of white and 73% of Asian students.

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