TAX CREDITS: TOO HIGH A PRICE TO ATTRACT COMPANIES, KEEP THEM IN NEW JERSEY?
OCTOBER 26, 2015
JOHN REITMEYER
Companies and critics explore the pros and cons — and costs — of incentives used to convince corporations not to move out of state
When Panasonic was seeking a new location for its corporate headquarters after four decades in Secaucus, moving to downtown Newark was not the original plan, according to chief executive officer Joe Taylor.
Offices in San Diego, Chicago, and Atlanta were all under consideration, but after intense lobbying from politicians here — and the enticement of an $80 million state economic-development tax incentive — Taylor decided to keep the company and its 1,000 employees in New Jersey, choosing to relocate in downtown Newark.
Now, Taylor said 60 percent of the company’s employees are taking the train to work, meaning their cars are off New Jersey’s already choked and potholed highways. Panasonic also has an agreement with city government to give local residents a first crack at job openings.
“I’m a huge proponent of economic development,” Taylor said while participating in a panel discussion during NJ Spotlight on Cities, a daylong conference held earlier this month at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark that focused on the state of New Jersey’s cities.
“I think tax credits are critically important,” he said. “I think other kinds of credits are critically important.”
OCTOBER 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY KATHLEEN LYNN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
What do you do with a big, isolated office building that no one wants anymore?
It’s a question being asked around New Jersey as giant office parks — built along highways when the suburbs boomed in the second half of the 20th century — sit empty or half-empty while corporations shrink their footprints and younger workers look for a more urban, transit-friendly buzz.
In northern Bergen County, for example, A&P, Mercedes-Benz USA, Hertz and Pearson have left or soon will leave offices built in the 1970s and 1980s, when corporations headed out of the cities for greener suburbs.
“There was a whole movement toward beautiful, idyllic campuses, but the workforce today wants to be in an urban hub,” said Andrew Merin, vice chairman with Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate firm with offices in East Rutherford.
As a result, “each of these properties is going to have to invent its own future,” said James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers.
Some of these properties are destined for the wrecking ball — including the former Pearson building in Upper Saddle River, owned by Mack-Cali, New Jersey’s largest office landlord, which is fighting to build housing on the site.
Others will be redeveloped. The most striking example is the ambitious, multimillion-dollar renovation of the old Bell Labs in Holmdel into Bell Works, a mixed-use property that aims to turn the landmark building’s giant atrium into an indoor Main Street with an “urban” vibe.
Whatever their fates, it’s clear that many of the state’s large, 30- or 40-year-old buildings will no longer function as home to a single corporate user. And, experts say, municipal officials who depended on those corporations — and their big property-tax payments — need to make another plan.
Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com. Published time: 18 Oct, 2015 10:27
The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic.
Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.
Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.
To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.
But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise.
But add the right detonator and you’re just one click away from complete devastation.
We can see how fragile the U.S. is now by considering just four tendencies.
1. Destruction of farms and reliable food source
The average American is a long way from food when the shops are closed.
The Washington Post reports that the number of farms in the country has fallen by some 4 million from more than 6 million in 1935 to roughly 2 million in 2012.
And according to the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, only about 2 percent of the US population live on farms.
That means that around 4.6 million people currently have the means to feed themselves.
Food supply logistics are extended, sometimes stretching thousands of miles. The shops have nothing more than a few days’ stock. A simple break in that supply line would clear the shops out in days.
2. Weak economic system
The American economic system is little more than froth.
The US currency came off the gold standard in 1933 and severed any link with gold in 1971. Since then, the currency has been essentially linked to oil, the value of which has been protected and held together by wars.
The whole world has had enough of the US and its hubris – not least the people of the US themselves, which the massive support currently for Putin’s decision to deal with ISIS demonstrates.
Since pro-active war is what keeps the US going, if it loses the monopoly on that front, its decline is inevitable.
Fiat economies always collapse. They last on average for 37 years. By that metric the US should have already run out of gas.
Once people wake up and smell the Yuan, the Exodus out of the dollar will be unstoppable.
Average pay and benefits $52,688 higher than non-gov’t employees
BY: Elizabeth Harrington
October 8, 2015 2:45 pm
Employees for the federal government earn far more than their counterparts in the private sector, according to a new study by the Cato Institute.
Federal workers’ pay and benefits were 78 percent higher than private employees, who earned an average of $52,688 less than public sector workers last year.
The study found that federal government workers earned an average of $84,153 in 2014, compared to the private sector’s average of $56,350. Cato based its findings on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
But when adding in benefits pay for federal workers, the difference becomes more dramatic. Federal employees made $119,934 in total compensation last year, while private sector workers earned $67,246, a difference of over $52,000, or 78 percent.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/02/2015 12:36 -0400
And so the “most important payrolls number” at least until the October FOMC meeting when the Fed will once again do nothing because suddenly the US is staring recession in the face, is in the history books, and as previewed earlier today, at 142K it was a total disaster, 60K below the consensus and below the lowest estimate.
Just as bad, the August print was also revised far lower from 173K to 136K. And while it is less followed, the household survey was an unmitigated disaster, with 236,000 jobs lost in September.
A Toys “R” Us store in Totowa, N.J. The retailer replaced 67 employees with workers in India. The Indian workers were trained by the American workers Toys “R” Us eventually laid off.
WAYNE, N.J. — When Congress designed temporary work visa programs, the idea was to bring in foreigners with specialized, hard-to-find skills who would help American companies grow, creating jobs to expand the economy. Now, though, some companies are bringing in workers on those visas to help move jobs out of the country.
For four weeks this spring, a young woman from India on a temporary visa sat elbow to elbow with an American accountant in a snug cubicle at the headquarters of Toys “R” Us here. The woman, an employee of a giant outsourcing company in India hired by Toys “R” Us, studied and recorded the accountant’s every keystroke, taking screen shots of her computer and detailed notes on how she issued payments for toys sold in the company’s megastores.
“She just pulled up a chair in front of my computer,” said the accountant, 49, who had worked for the company for than 15 years. “She shadowed me everywhere, even to the ladies’ room.”
By late June, eight workers from the outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, had produced intricate manuals for the jobs of 67 people, mainly in accounting. They then returned to India to train TCS workers to take over and perform those jobs there. The Toys “R” Us employees in New Jersey, many of whom had been at the company more than a decade, were laid off.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2015, 1:11 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2015, 7:10 AM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Workers at 11 A&P-owned stores in North Jersey, and thousands more at 84 other stores, breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday after learning that those stores had been sold to the Acme and Stop & Shop chains for $370 million.
The deals, approved Monday by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., preserve the jobs of 10,750 union employees, including 4,000 workers represented by United Food & Commercial Workers Local 464a in Little Falls.
Acme and Stop & Shop have been negotiating with the unions representing the workers and are close to reaching an agreement, a union official said. A cornerstone of the deals with Acme and Stop & Shop is that current union jobs will be preserved, the official said.
A&P is selling its stores to pay off creditors in its bankruptcy case. But the company, Drain and the unions have argued that job preservation should be considered, along with sale price.
This map shows where N.J. residents are jobless, out of benefits
September 4, 2015
Colleen O’Dea
Tens of thousands, many formerly employed by casinos, have maxed out on their unemployment payments
New Jersey’s 4 million workers may celebrate Labor Day on Monday, but those who are unemployed — particularly those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits — have less to cheer about.
According to data from the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development, nearly 79,000 unemployed New Jerseyans had maxed out of their benefits this year through August 15. The greatest proportion — more than 14,000 — stopped collecting unemployment in March, with a good number of those being former casino employees who lost their jobs when three casinos shut their doors last September.
The largest number of the unemployed who have lost their benefits, 7,619, live in Essex County. But the greatest impact of the losses is in Atlantic and Cape May counties, where the number of people who can no longer collect unemployment amounts to almost 5 percent of the total work force. Again, the casino closures are largely to blame.
Typically, New Jerseyans who lose their jobs can collect unemployment benefits for up to 26 weeks, depending on several factors, including how long they had worked prior to being laid off.
Beginning in the midst of the last recession, Congress approved and the president signed payment extensions for the long-term unemployed for five years. That enabled some unemployed people to collect a portion of their former salary for as long as 99 weeks.
NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Unemployment numbers out of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are a cause for celebration on both sides of the political aisle and that is, because the current rate reported today for the August Jobs Reportis 5.1%, a huge improvement over the 10% notched in October 2009. Just one problem: that number is so misleading it just about counts as a lie.
You have just quit looking for work because it’s pointless? Officially you do not count as unemployed. Ditto for if you’ve taken a part-time job, however wretched, just to put a few bucks in your pocket. You are not unemployed,
The real numbers may be twice as high. Maybe one in ten of us is unemployed or we have just plain given up on the idea of a fulltime job. The BLS acknowledges this in a different tally that it calls U-6. By its count, 11.3% of us have given up on the dream of a good full-time job. Those workers, in BLS parlance, are “discouraged.” Some have given up looking for fulltime work. Others work part-time because that’s all they can get.
Some states do especially poorly. In West Virginia 13% count as discouraged. In Arizona, 13.8% of the potential workforce is not even close to where it wants to be. Nevada is a stomach churning 15.2%, the nation’s biggest clump of dissatisfied workers and the discouraged unemployed.
Polling company Gallup, by the way, says the BLS discouraged workers numbers are low. It claims that 14.7% of us – that’s one in seven – is underemployed
RCNG – Ridgewood Chamber Networking Group
AM – worth getting up early to be part of–
AM Networking in Ridgewood
Tuesday and Thursday
7:30am-8:45am
ConnectOne Bank
171 E. Ridgewood Ave.
201-445-2600 for more information
email: [email protected]
*******************************
PM NETWORKING IN RIDGEWOOD!
27 Chestnut Street
RCNG – Ridgewood Chamber Networking Group
every Wednesday,
Meet/Greet 5:30pm
Networking 5:45-6:45pm
rsvp 201-445-2600 [email protected]
************
RYPE- Ridgewood’s Young Professional Exchange
Networking for ages 40 and under Professionals.
Next Networking
Thursday, September 10th, 6pm
call 201-445-2600 [email protected]
meeting at 27 Chestnut Street.
go through restaurant’s patio and
take elevator to first floor.
Invite your business friends to join us!
rsvp to Allison- [email protected]
*************
Woman’s Networking
BBLB-Brown Bag Lunch Bunch meet on
Tuesday’s – alternating between 9am & 11am
call for dates of times-201-445-2600
women supporting women at its best!
mark your calendar!
chamber office-27 Chestnut St.
This networking is designed to place real value on the advise and wisdom of today’s business women.
Engage, Encourage, Empower!
for more information call 201-445-2600
N E T W O R K I N G
still the best way to do business
The Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce is a
member of the ICC – Inter-Chamber Consortium.
The ICC is an organization of several Bergen County Chambers that come together to work with each other to help build relationships for
the area business owners.
ICC MONTHLY MEETING SCHEDULE
Cliffside Park Chamber of Commerce
September 14, 2015.
MegaNet Networking date to TBA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job growth slowed in August, but the unemployment rate dropped to a near 7-1/2-year low and wages accelerated, keeping alive prospects of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike later this month.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 173,000 last month after an upwardly revised gain of 245,000 in July, the Labor Department said on Friday. August’s gain was the smallest in five months as the factory sector lost the most jobs since July 2013.
The jobs count, however, may have been tarnished by a statistical fluke that has often led to sharp upward revisions to payroll figures for August after initial weak readings.
Indicating the hiring slowdown was likely not reflective of the economy’s true health, the jobless rate fell two-tenths of a point to 5.1 percent, its lowest level since April 2008.
In addition, payrolls data for June and July were revised to show 44,000 more jobs created than previously reported, bringing the average job gains for the past three months to a solid 221,000. Average hourly earnings increased 8 cents, the biggest rise in seven months and the length of the average workweek also expanded.
(CNSNews.com) – A record 94,031,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month — 261,000 more than July — and the labor force participation rate stayed stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department reported on Friday, as the nation heads into the Labor Day weekend.
The number of Americans not in the labor force has continued to rise, partly because of retiring baby-boomers and fewer workers entering the workforce.
In August, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 251,096,000. Of those, 157,065,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.
The 157,065,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.6 percent of the 251,096,000 civilian noninstitutional population — the same as it was in July and June. Not since October 1977, when the participation rate dropped to 62.4, has the percentage been this low.
By AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH September 1, 2015, 5:15 AM
By one dismal measure, America is joining the likes of Third World countries.
The number of U.S. residents who are struggling to survive on just $2 a day has more than doubled since 1996, placing 1.5 million households and 3 million children in this desperate economic situation. That’s according to “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” a book from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that will be released on Sept. 1.
The measure of poverty isn’t arbitrary — it’s the threshold the World Bank uses to measure global poverty in the developed world. While it may be the norm to see families in developing countries such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia struggle to survive on such meager income, the growing ranks of America’s ultrapoor may be shocking, given that the U.S. is considered one of the most developed capitalist countries in the world.
“Most of us would say we would have trouble understanding how families in the county as rich as ours could live on so little,” said author Kathryn Edin, who spoke on a conference call to discuss the book, which she wrote with Luke Shaefer. Edin is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. “These families, contrary to what many would expect, are workers, and their slide into poverty is a failure of the labor market and our safety net, as well as their own personal circumstances.”
To be sure, the labor market has been rocky for many Americans, not just the poorest. But changes in how employers deal with their low-wage workers have hit many of these poor Americans especially hard, such as the rise of on-call scheduling, which leaves some parents scrambling for hours and dealing with unpredictable pay.
Retailers such as Walmart (WMT) and fast-food companies increasingly are using sophisticated scheduling software that allows them to tinker with work schedules at the last minute, depending on their stores’ needs. That reduces costs for the employer, but it can make life difficult for employees, especially those with children and dependents.
If there’s one phrase that can inspire patriotism, it’s the American Dream. That concept was defined by James Truslow Adams as being the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” The pursuit of this dream has driven the American people for generations, and recently, it has driven them directly into ABC’s Shark Tank.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Business in America has changed drastically in recent years. At a time when business idols are college drop outs who built companies from their garagesand Silicon Valley is a household name (and a tv show!), the goal of entrepreneurship has trumped all. The idea of rising through the ranks of your company has been surpassed by fast-paced success stories about startups improving and conquering old industries in record amounts of time (looking at you, Uber). This shifting business environment paired with the underlying hope to be the next overnight million-dollar company is what makes Shark Tank so interesting.
