Wages And Income

The median wage for U.S. workers still trails the peak reached before the last recession and income inequality is growing, even in a positive economic environment of strong job growth, rising productivity and tame inflation, a new study shows. Real, inflation-adjusted earnings, though rising, were 3.1% lower last year than in 1989 for workers paid the median hourly wage, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Through the first six months of this year, the real median wage of $11.

A groundbreaking study of workplace discrimination that sent "matched" pairs of white and black men to compete for the same jobs found that white applicants were three times as likely to receive a job offer and almost three times as likely to advance in the hiring process. The Urban Institute study sent teams of black and white job-seekers with identical qualifications to apply for 476 jobs advertised in newspapers in Washington and Chicago.

In its latest search for sources of tax revenue, the federal government has targeted an unlikely group: teenagers. The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act, signed into law in May, aims to raise $2.1 billion over the next 10 years with a change in the so-called kiddie tax. The change is a relatively simple one, noted Mark Luscombe, principal tax analyst with CCH Inc.

At least 10 families in an Oxnard apartment complex long popular with farm workers are fighting orders that they must adhere to their leases and get rid of the extra tenants living in their overcrowded units. RHC Communities of Newport Beach issued 10 notices to residents at the Mira Loma Apartments, 1600 W. 5th St., last week warning tenants they were violating a company policy by permitting either overcrowding or substandard living conditions.

Seldom can any speech have received so swift and so drastic a financial review. Fighting to renew his presidency, George Bush spoke for almost an hour in Houston on the final night of the Republican convention. Wall Street and the international financial markets read his lips and did not care for what they saw. The next day stocks plunged and the dollar fell to record lows against the deutsche mark.

Trade friction between Japan and the Unites States has created an unusual alliance this year for the annual "spring labor offensive" here. The government of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has joined the labor unions in citing Japan's massive trade surplus as a reason for increasing wages--creating more consumer purchasing power and thus bringing in more foreign goods. "I want enterprises that can afford to do so to give high wage increases," Nakasone declared in Parliament.

The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday approved an array of tax breaks for corporations, real estate developers, first-time home buyers and upper-income savers aimed at stimulating the lagging economy at a combined cost of $21.4 billion over the next five years. Among the bipartisan bill's provisions are an urban aid package for riot-damaged Los Angeles and other troubled cities and the offer of deductible individual retirement accounts for all taxpayers.

California taxpayers are roughly twice as likely as other Americans to be called in for face-to-face audits by the Internal Revenue Service, according to figures released Saturday, raising questions about the federal agency's enforcement procedures in the state. What's more, in Southern California, the people who go through these often nerve-racking IRS examinations face higher charges for penalties and back taxes than taxpayers in nearly every other part of the country.