Minimum Wage Debate L.A. Style
What if three different studies on the effects of a minimum wage increase in Los Angeles each came up with a different conclusion — who do you trust? That was a question asked at the Town Hall Los Angeles debate Thursday between Gary Toebben, President and CEO of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and […]
Local School Funding & the Exclusive Electorate
State funding for K-12 public education has been rising, but 70 percent of public school parents say it is “not enough” in our April PPIC Survey. Are California voters likely to heed these parents’ calls and support local ballot measures for school funding? It doesn’t look likely. To begin with, likely voters are much less […]
Time to Abolish California’s Income Tax?
The last thing overtaxed Californians need is another tax. Yet the Legislature continues to churn out new taxes that, once enacted, rarely go away. Our economy has been transitioning to a greater reliance on services. As a result, some tax reform groups have argued for expanding the sales tax to include services. On its own, […]
Pensions Leaving Cities in Holes
The economy certainly has improved in California. L.A.’s unemployment rate, 7.6 percent last month, was down a full percentage point from a year earlier. Silicon Beach and Silicon Valley continue to burgeon. There’s such a flurry of building in Los Angeles County that construction costs are soaring, as we chronicled in last week’s Business Journal. […]