Finance

Speaking of Clunkers

Wed, 08/12/2009 - 16:04

For serious transportation policy wonks lately every day is like Christmas.  Climate change, bailout, deteriorating infrastructure, reauthorization, aging baby boomers, bailout, stimulus, new administration, economic development, global competition, urban redevelopment, bailout, etc.  One has all they can do to just keep up with all the relevant news and positioning say nothing of understanding it.  In fact, I don’t understand it.   

Tight Budgets and the Need to Plan

Thu, 04/23/2009 - 06:05

Which of these families most needs to plan its family commitments and related budget items?

Family 1:  Wife is a bankruptcy lawyer whose business is booming; husband is an executive at a growing wind-energy company and has just received a nice raise, paid out of growing profits.  The kids are grown.  The couple's two Polish Lowland Sheepdogs are very healthy.

Family 2:  Wife is a plant manager for a U.S.-owned automobile company, facing mandatory unpaid time off this year; husband is a travel agent who sells high-end vacation packages to school teachers, planners and other middle-income individuals and families.  Son has graduated from college but cannot find a job and is living at home and working part-time at a burger place.  Daughter will be a college junior next year at an institution that has had its funding cut by the state and has thus announced a 15 percent tuition increase.

Travel Demands Are A-Changing: So Should Our Spending

Sun, 04/12/2009 - 14:33

Politicians and planners be warned: you will now be judged according to your ability to improve walking, cycling and public transit services.  

Something Good To Say About California's Prop 13 In A Housing Slump

Long considered the source of California's fiscal and land use woes, Proposition 13, passed by voters in 1978, limits increases in property tax. However, it may prove to be an 'economic stabilizer' during the current housing slump.
10 July 2008 - 1:00pm
The Los Angeles Times
Syndicate content