A reportissued earlier this year from California’s Office of Legislative Analyst “California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences,” cites the following statistics:“Today, an average California home costs $440,000, about two–and–a–half times the average national home price ($180,000). Also, California’s average monthly rent is about $1,240, 50 percent higher than the rest of the country ($840 per month).”

It’s actually much worse than that. Anyone living on California’s urbanized coast, from Marin Countyto San Diego, has to laugh at the idea that a modest homecan be found for anywhere close to $440,000, or a decent rental can be found for anywhere close to $1,240 per month. In most urban areas within 50 miles of the California coast, finding a home or a monthly rental at twice those amountswould be considered a bargain.

These prohibitive costs for housing are mirrored in California’s unusually highcosts for electricity, gasoline, water, and, of course, California’s unusually high taxes. The cost of living in California… Read More

Everyone should breathe a sigh of relief. Or should they?

Santa Clara County’s nurses,librarians, janitors, dispatchers, and assorted other workers belonging to SEIU Local 521 will not be going on strike after all. At least not yet. Late night negotiations have produced a deal that’s being sent back to the members.

The exact terms of this latest dealare not clear. But according to sources at the San Jose Mercury, the level of pay and benefits was only one of the issues being negotiated. Another key issue was work conditions – in particular, excessive overtime and excessiveworkloads.

The issue of pay and benefits is directly connected to the issue of overtime and workload, of course, because when employees are paid more than the budget can accommodate, it is impossible to hire more employees. Here is a look at how much key members of this union are making:

Santa Clara County Public Employees Average Total Compensation by Select Job Title, 2013 … Read More

Current policy solutions enacted to address California’s water crisis provide an object lesson in how corruption masquerading as virtue is impoverishing the general population to enrich a handful of elites. Instead of building freeways, expanding ports, restoring bridges and aqueducts, and constructing dams, desalination plants, and power stations, California’s taxpayers are pouring tens of billions each yearinto public sector pension funds – who invest 90% of the proceeds out-of-state, and the one big construction project on the table, the $100B+ “bullet train,” fails to justify itself under virtually any credible cost/benefit analysis. Why?

The reason is because infrastructure, genuinely conceived in the public interest,lowersthe cost of living. This in-turn causes artificially inflated asset values to fall, imperiling the solvency of pension funds – something that would force them to reducebenefits. Beneficial infrastructure is also a threat to crony capitalists who don’t want a business climate that attracts competitors. Affordable land, energy, and water encourage economic growth. Crony capitalists and public sector unions alike hide… Read More

Increases to the minimum wage in California are moving closer to reality. As reported on March 30th byMyNewsLA.com, “Los Angeles County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis will ask their colleagues to approve spending up to $95,000 to have the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation review a series of studies of the issue performed in relation to the city of Los Angeles’ proposal to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour by 2017 and to $15.25 an hour by 2019.”

California’s minimum wage is currently $9.00 per hour. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour.

Largely lost in the debate over the “fight for fifteen” (dollars per hour) is America’s inflation adjusted minimum wage based on historical precedents. It’s an interesting topic that deserves discussion, becausehistorical minimum wagesexpressed in 2015 dollarsvary a great deal.… Read More

A frequent and entirely valid point made by representatives of public sector unions is that their membership, government workers, need to be able to afford to live in the cities and communities they serve. The problem with that argument, however, is thatnobodycan afford to live in these cities and communities, especially in California.

There are a lot of reasons for California’s high cost of living, but the most crippling by far is the price of housing. Historically, and still today in markets where land development is relatively unconstrained, the median home price is about four times the median household income. In Northern California’s Santa Clara County, the median home price in October 2014 was $699,750,eight timesthe median household income of $88,215. Even people earning twice the median household income in Santa Clara County will have a very hard time ever paying off a home that costs this much. And if they lose their job, they lose their home. But is land scarce in California?

The answer to this question, despite rhetoric to the contrary, is almost indisputably no. As documented in an earlier post, “… Read More