The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, a collection of more than 100 business, labor and nonprofit groups have sent a letter to all members the New Jersey Legislature urging them to oppose Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed $1-billion-plus business tax increase on business in the FY25 State Budget.
Continue reading New Jersey’s Economic Competitiveness Goes From Bad to Worse
sometimes you can fall off the floor
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, NJBIA released its 2024 Regional Business Climate Analysis showing New Jersey continues to remain last in the region by a wide margin in terms of business taxes and cost competitiveness.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index decreased 0.1 point in November to 90.6, which marks the 23rd consecutive month below the 50-year average of 98. Twenty-two percent of owners reported that inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business, unchanged from October but 10 points lower than this time last year.
Assemblyman DePhillips moves to make New Jersey America’s innovation leader
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, New Jersey’s corporate business tax has led to an exodus of investment in the state once called the nation’s medicine chest. New Jersey is fifth out of seven states in the region for innovation, according to an NJBIA study, and experienced the largest loss of undergraduate students by more than 21,000.
Continue reading New Bill Looks to Spur Research and Investment in New Jersey
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, With the U.S. gaining 1.4 million jobs in August and the national unemployment rate at 8.4% compared to the nearly historic high of 14.7% at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, WalletHub today released updated rankings for the States Whose August Unemployment Rates Are Bouncing Back Most, along with accompanying videos and audio files, to illustrate which areas of the country have had the best recovery so far.
Continue reading New Jersey has the 9th Worst Unemployment Rate Recovery
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, in 2018 New Jersey became the No. 1 state to move away from , according to new data from moving and relocation company United Vans Lines.
The top reason why residents left was for a professional opportunity, the United Vans Lines data shows. Of all the residents who moved out, 46 percent listed “job” as the deciding factor.“A leading motivation behind these migration patterns across all regions,” in fact, “is a career change,” the report says. About “one out of every two people who moved in the past year moved for a new job or company transfer.”
Continue reading WallHub Claims New Jersey is the 5th Happiest State ?
“Any regulation that is outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers, or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped.” – Donald J. Trump
YEARS OF GOVERNMENT OVERREACH: President Donald J. Trump has inherited the bloated regulatory regime of the past Administration.
According to the American Action Forum, the regulations from the Obama Administration cost United States taxpayers a total of $873 billion.
The Obama Administration issued 3,037 finalized regulations.
GETTING GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE WAY: Today, President Trump signed legislation to help eliminate unnecessary, harmful, and job-killing regulations.
Earlier today, President Trump signed four bills under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), in one of the few times the CRA has been used to cancel Federal regulations.
House Joint Resolution 37 will roll back the “blacklisting” rule that empowers big law firms to get rich by suing American companies and workers who contract with the Federal Government.
House Joint Resolution 44 removes the Bureau of Land Management’s “Planning 2.0” rule to prevent further centralization of Federal land management decisions at the expense of local citizens.
House Joint Resolutions 57 and 58 eliminate layers of bureaucracy that could have cost State and local school systems millions of dollars, while encouraging freedom and innovation in our schools.
CUTTING RED TAPE ACROSS THE GOVERNMENT: President Trump has signed Executive Orders and legislation to cut regulations that get in the way of Americans.
President Trump has required that for every new Federal regulation, two existing regulations be eliminated.
President Trump ordered agencies to create Regulatory Reform Task Forces to identify costly and unnecessary regulations.
President Trump signed an Executive Order instructing Federal agencies to minimize the burden of the Affordable Care Act on Americans while he works to repeal and replace it.
President Trump signed legislation, House Joint Resolution 38, to prevent the burdensome “Stream Protection Rule” from causing further harm to the coal industry.
President Trump signed legislation, House Joint Resolution 41, to eliminate a costly regulation that threatened to put American mining and energy companies and their employees at an unfair disadvantage.
President Trump directed the Secretary of Commerce to develop a plan to streamline Federal permitting processes for domestic manufacturers.
President Trump signed an Executive Order expediting the environmental review and approval processes for domestic infrastructure projects.
President Trump directed the Secretary of the Treasury to conduct a full review of the burdensome regulations required by the Dodd-Frank Act.
President Trump ordered a re-examination of the Department of Labor’s “fiduciary rule,” to make certain that it does not harm Americans as they save for retirement.
KEEPING HIS PROMISES TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: President Donald J. Trump has promised the country he would cut needless regulation.
While campaigning for President, Donald Trump promised to cut regulations massively.
While campaigning for President, Donald Trump vowed to cut any regulation that is outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers, or contrary to the national interest.
file photo by Boyd Loving
By Brent Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 23, 2016 at 6:30 AM, updated November 24, 2016 at 12:19 AM
TRENTON — After seeing the state’s unemployment rate shrink significantly last year, New Jersey’s economy is expected to slow down over the next decade, according to predictions in the latest economic forecast from Rutgers University.
Meanwhile, the United States as a whole faces economic uncertainty as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, the report from the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service says.
The report predicts the Garden State will experience a “weaker-looking” economy through 2026, one that includes a leveling off of its unemployment rate. Meanwhile, the state’s real domestic product is likely to suffer and its population growth to sputter.
Published: Sept 2, 2016 2:38 p.m. ET
It’s Labor Day weekend, and despite unemployment under 5% and nearly 15 million private-sector jobs created since February 2010, nobody’s celebrating.
Workforce participation is stuck near historic lows, six million people are part-timers but want to work full time, and wage growth remains subdued.
Both presidential candidates have talked a good game about jobs and the economy, but neither addresses the real problem. The U.S. job-creation machine—once the envy of the world—is broken, because American corporations cannot create steady, well-paying jobs here in the USA while also providing maximal returns to their investors, who are really in charge.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-investors-are-to-blame-for-labors-woes-2016-09-02?link=sfmw_tw
April 9,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Montvale NJ, Rep. Scott Garret addressed students at Saint Joseph Regional High School in Montvale about the role of Congress and the importance of financial literacy.
Seinfeld GIFs Help Explain the “Fiduciary” Rule
https://financialservices.house.gov/blog/?postid=400499
Garrett also toured some New Jersey Businesses in Bergen County were “precision” is the name of the game at Glebar Company a manufacturer of industrial equipment in Ramsey. Less precise, however, are the mountains of rules and regulations passed down from Washington, D.C. that bludgeon businesses here at home and depress hiring in New Jersey.
Garrett also stopped by Nova Electric in Bergenfield to discuss their business and the concerns many Americans are having about the state of the economy.
Then a trip to Wallkill Valley High School ‘Stuff the Bus’ full of food to help restock the shelves at the Sussex County food pantry. Local initiative always seems more effective the big government one size fits all programs .
Linette Lopez
If you move away from your home state, some friends might throw you a party. Maybe you’ll get a happy-hour discount at your local bar.
If you’re really a big deal, you might get to throw out the first pitch at your local minor-league baseball team’s next game.
Other than that, everything will be pretty much the same after you’re gone.
That is, of course, unless you’re billionaire David Tepper.
If you are him, then when you move away you have the potential to send your whole state ( in this case New Jersey) into red-alert mode.
Tepper, the founder of the hedge fund Appaloosa Management, moved to Florida last fall. This, according to Bloomberg, has leaders of his former state very concerned.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tepper-move-hurts-new-jersey-2016-4
Trenton= dumb as a box of rocks
we had to repeat this Trenton , Ridgewood , they are just not listening
By Matt Friedman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
TRENTON — New Jersey’s state government would seek to better understand why companies are leaving the state under legislation approved by a Senate panel today.
The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee voted 10-0 to approve the bill, which would require the state’s labor commissioner conduct a written survey of any major company that’s either moving out of state or laying off a large number of employees.
The legislation comes in the wake of Mercedes-Benz decision to vacate its Bergen County headquarters and take 1,000 jobs with it to the outskirts of Atlanta, citing the South’s lower cost of doing business.
file photo by Boyd loving
What the Top 5 States People Are Moving From Have in Common
Salim Furth / @salimfurth / January 06, 2016
Salim Furth, Ph.D., researches and explains how public policy affects economic growth as a research fellow in macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.Read his research.
Americans are moving to places with affordable costs of living and strong labor markets (or good retirement communities). The top destination states of 2015could hardly be more different geographically and culturally: Oregon and South Carolina. What they have in common is that both states are relatively affordable places to live.
The data on moving comes from United Van Lines, which ranks the states based on the proportion of interstate moves that were inbound or outbound.
In Oregon, 69 percent of moves were inbound. The state with the worst ratio was New Jersey, from which 67 percent of moves were outbound.
The top five outbound states of 2015 were:
New Jersey
New York
Illinois
Connecticut
Ohio
In metro Portland, Ore., the average owner-occupied home cost $305,402 in 2013, compared to $380,420 in Seattle or a budget-busting $730,156 in San Francisco. But even in Portland there is room for improvement: Easing regulation a bit could make the average house $39,000 more affordable.
In South Carolina, homes are even cheaper, with free-market competition keeping the price of a new home close to the actual construction cost.
Where urban and suburban land use regulation is modest, builders can meet demand with new supply. In places like San Francisco and Boston that lack that flexibility, people leave despite those cities’ high wages and dynamic economies.
Moving patterns show how important cost of living is to American families. With perfect weather and a booming, high-tech economy, California ought to be the #1 destination. Instead, more moving trucks are leaving the state than entering.
The top five inbound states of 2015 were:
Oregon
South Carolina
Vermont
Idaho
North Carolina
Policymakers can lower the cost of living by removing unnecessary regulations and licensure requirements, streamlining bureaucracy, and ending protections that have been granted to favored industries.
Blog Editors Note : try increasing taxes, insurance and education costs , coupled with decline of the two parent household , decline of work ethic, and regulating small business out of existence
By John Aidan Byrne
December 27, 2015 | 2:34am
Downward mobility is catching on fast with America’s new economic underdogs — the emerging middle-class minority.
The ranks of the American middle class have sunk to a shocking new low.
After four decades as an economic majority, middle-class Americans are no longer in that admirable place. They’re down to 49.9 percent from 61 percent of the population in 1971, with the ranks of the poor and ultrarich growing to a majority in the US.
“The fabric of income distribution is stretching thin,” Rakesh Kochhar, lead author of the recent Pew Research Center study “The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground,” told The Post.
“There’s been a hollowing out in the middle, a bulking up on the edges. The gaps are at record highs,” Kochhar said, adding that the wealth of upper-income families is now about seven times that of the middle class, compared with three times about 30 years ago.
Meanwhile, the middle-class share of US household income has plunged from 62 percent in 1970 to 43 percent today.
And for lower-income families looking to move up to middle-class status, that accomplishment is getting harder to pull off, according to new analysis.
Analysts offer no single explanation for the decline of America’s middle class.
Years of wage stagnation, the decline of unions, a skills gap, economic malaise, taxation, debt and policymaking are often cited, as is technological efficiency in a more globalized economy that rewards outsourcing. Some analysts say the Fed’s trillions of dollars in quantitative easing ended up disproportionately in the hands and wallets of bankers and other upper-middle-class Americans.
Published: Dec 22, 2015 10:08 a.m. ET
The economy expanded a touch slower in the third quarter than previously reported, revised government figures show, but the path of growth is still the same: The U.S. running well below the historical norm more than six years into a recovery.
Gross domestic product — the sum of all the activity in an economy — increased at a 2% annual pace from July to September, according to the government’s latest update. Previously the Commerce Department had said the U.S. grew at a 2.1% rate after a 3.9% increase in the second quarter.
The slight downgrade was triggered by a larger trade deficit and a smaller buildup in inventories than earlier estimates showed.
The U.S. expanded at a 2.2% rate through the first nine months of the year, and the economy is projected to grow at a similar pace in the fourth quarter that ends on Dec. 31. If so, the economy will have failed to reach 3% growth for the 10th straight year, marking the slowest stretch since the end of World War II.
Historically the economy has expanded at a 3.3% rate.
The government’s second update on GDP growth reflected a somewhat worse trade picture in the late summer and early fall. Exports rose a slower 0.7% instead of an earlier 0.9% estimate. And imports climbed 2.3% instead of 2.1%.
Companies also rebuilt inventories somewhat less than the government had tallied.
The value of inventories increased $85.5 billion, down from a prior $90.2 billion estimate. Inventories had jumped by $113.5 billion in the second quarter when the economy expanded at a much faster 3.9% clip.
Spending on home construction rose at a faster 8.2% pace in the third quarter instead of 7.3%, the revised Commerce Department figures show.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/third-quarter-gdp-growth-trimmed-to-2-2015-12-22
