A group representing union hotel workers and Anaheim residents has submitted a referendum petition with more than 18,000 signatures to the city, challenging the proposed development of two luxury hotels in the Resort District. . . The union has sought a labor partnership with Wincome.
Brown has acknowledged the “volatility” that the dependence fosters, because incomes of the wealthy are tied to the stock market and other investments. But he’s declined to spend political capital on making the tax system more stable.
Congressional lawmakers have launched a formal investigation into whether solar-energy companies improperly received billions of dollars in tax incentives from the Obama administration.
Whatever your view of the past several years, America’s economic growth is not what it used to be. Our real gross domestic product roared along from 1947 to 1974, growing an average of 3.8 percent per year, and slowed only slightly until 2004. But since then, it’s dropped by half. Today’s economy, growing at a sluggish 1.6 percent per year, has been described using an old term inherited from the 1930s, “secular stagnation.”
Even the liberal Chronicle focused on overwhelming opposition to rent control by economists, noting that 81 percent of those surveyed disagreed that rent control has “improved the quantity and quality of affordable rental housing.” The article pointed to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which concluded rent control results “in a decline in the overall quality of a community’s housing stock.”
To be sure, since 2010 California’s job growth has outperformed the national average, propelled largely by the tech-driven Bay Area; its 14% employment expansion over the past six years is just a shade below Texas’. But dial back to 2001, and California’s job growth rate is 12%, less than half that of Texas’ 27%. With roughly 10 million fewer residents, Texas has created almost 2.8 million jobs since the turn of the millennium, compared to 2.0 million in California.
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab has taken on the task of doing an annual evaluation the state of solar and wind power in the United States. With the data in hand from 2015, it recently completed a look at the trends in the two renewable power sources, both of which appear to be booming. Thanks to a restored tax break, wind installations have returned to levels last seen in 2012. But that’s tame compared to solar, where 2016 is on track to see more than double the previous record for utility-scale installations
A gauge of U.S. business prices was flat last month, a sign of continued mild inflationary pressures as Federal Reserve officials debate whether to raise short-term interest rates.
Environmentalists, urban planners and economists are pushing cities such as New York and San Francisco to build more housing to help combat rapidly rising rents and home prices that are crowding out the middle class. But trying to build upward in order to keep cities accessible to average families may be a losing battle, according to findings to be released Wednesday by BuildZoom, a website for contractors. . . “What you’ll get there is an exacerbation of the problems we already have in expensive cities. The distinction between homeowners and renters will become less and less a stage of life and more and more if your parents can help you. That’s not a future that seems very welcoming to me,” Mr. Romem said.
The studies, published by The American Review of Public Administration and American Politics Research, examine why states adopted or terminated film tax incentive programs and measures the effects of film tax credits in 40 states on employment and wages from 1998 to 2013. The authors found that sales tax waivers had no measurable effects; transferable tax credits had a small, sustained effect on employment but no effect on wages; and the most generous form of tax credit, refundable credits, had no employment effect and a temporary wage effect. Spending more on incentives had no lasting impact.
SPM improves on the official poverty measure by better accounting for differences in the cost of living across the US. When California’s high housing costs are factored in, a much larger share of the state’s population is living in poverty: 20.6 percent under the SPM, compared to 15.0 percent under the official measure. Accounting for housing costs boosts California’s poverty rate to the highest of any state, up from 17th highest under the official poverty measure.
There is reason for business to be concerned about continuing the tax that applies to upper income taxpayers. Many business owners pay their business taxes through their personal income taxes. In a recent survey done by the Los Angeles County Business Federation, the personal income tax was ranked first among concerns of the organization’s members. In addition, business opponents of the tax cite a negative effect on the economy.
“Given what’s happening in California, where we have a lot of legislative costs imposed on employers, and we have employers leaving California, this is pretty remarkable,” said Patrick Kelly, treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 952, the union representing some of the factory’s workers.
The median household income—the level at which half are above and half are below—rose 5.2% from a year earlier, after adjusting for inflation, or $2,800, to $56,500, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. . . The largest increases in incomes were for households in the bottom fifth of all earners, while incomes declined slightly for households in the top fifth. The ratio between incomes for households at the 90th percentile and 10th percentile declined last year.
Residential installations are expected to increase by 21 percent this year, but in 2017 the figure will inch upward by about 0.3 percent. The change comes as utilities push back against mandates to buy the electricity and shifting tax policies curb demand. Throw in sliding electricity rates and it’s clear the economic benefits of rooftop panels are no longer so obvious to consumers.