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By Steve Levy
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved ...
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved downtown in 2006 and enjoy being able to walk to activities. I do not drive and being downtown where I work and close to the CalTrain station and downtown amenities makes my life more independent. I have worked all my life as an economist focusing on the California economy. My work centers around two main activities. The first is helping regional planning agencies such as ABAG understand their long-term growth outlook. I do this for several regional planning agencies in northern, southern and central coast California. My other main activity is studying workforce trends and policy implications both as a professional and as a volunteer member of the NOVA (Silicon Valley) and state workforce boards. The title of the blog is Invest and Innovate and that is what I believe is the imperative for our local area, region, state and nation. That includes investing in people, in infrastructure and in making our communities great places to live and work. I served on the recent Palo Alto Infrastructure Commission. I also believe that our local and state economy benefits from being a welcoming community, which mostly we are a leader in, for people of all religions, sexual preferences and places of birth.
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California is Now the 5th Largest World Economy in Terms of GDP
Uploaded: May 8, 2018
By itself passing Great Britain is no big deal--we could as easily be 1% larger or smaller and in any event India will eventually rise to number 5.
Nor as we all know, the economic growth in California has brought housing and traffic challenges and has not benefited everyone equally.
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But there are some important takeaways.
One is that California's economic growth is no longer primarily tech and the Bay Area though they remain important. Recently Southern California and the Sacramento region have seen strong job growth.
Port, airport and tourism activity are posting record levels. The entertainment industry is strong. Tech is expanding in Southern California and San Diego, Warehousing jobs are surging, many in lower income areas.
Two is that the state's economic growth has occurred after high bracket income taxes were increased and permit caps and fees were instituted to reduce green house gas emissions and, at the same time, housing costs surged. The implication is that despite these actions firms and individuals continue to find California attractive as a place ti live, work and innovate,
None of this minimizes the challenges, they will catch up with us if not addressed soon, And that includes the fact that the boom has created special challenges for low and middle income families.
The third implication is that the state faces a new and unnecessary economic threat--that of trade disruptions and resulting higher prices and restrictions on immigration.
I continue to think that one of our most attractive competitive attributes is a generally welcoming attitude--to people from all over and of varied religious and sexual preferences. It is one of the things i like most about being a Califorian.
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