California AB-5 Law

R&G, Dan- you're right it's about control. They're not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing.

In order to make significant positive change, everyone's got to wake up to what's really been going on. Here's a short film which shows the truth symbolically:

Watch to the end- it's worth it (can take repeated viewing to really get everything presented). Read the comments! There is hope. We need everyone to wake up and start working together in unity.
 
The bad part of politics has come true: "Even if you aren't interested in politics, sometimes politics will get interested in YOU."
 
My hunch is that this will eventually work itself out for us video professionals through an exemption (or one of the lawsuits). There are so many exemptions in this law already that almost include video that it seems like we were an oversight by lawmakers that didn't think of us. I'm going to an educational event for video professionals in San Diego (home of the bill) next week that is being hosted by a law firm here in town and am interested to hear what they say. If it wasn't for the "the individual setting their own hours" I think there'd be enough gray area to keep moving along as normal providing that all crew members have their own business licenses (which is like $40 a year). The only other quagmire would be production assistants because by it's very nature the role requires no specialized skill set and requires direct supervision and direction all day.

If this bill doesn't get changed it will kill a ton of small business which I can't imagine was its original intent - I've got to think this was aimed at the huge corporations.

I do think that some industries like ride share should give its drivers the option to become a full-time employee OR remain a contractor. It seems reasonable to me that multi-billion dollar companies should offer benefits and protections to its workforce seeing as they (and their personal cars) are the entire revenue generating source for those companies. Can't help but think that my Lyft driver the other night - a lady with a handicapped license plate who was super nice and a great driver, but also couldn't get out to help us load our luggage - would gladly have the option to trade some freedoms/income in exchange for an affordable health care policy bargained by a company with a HUGE pool of "employees".

Ps. Here's the event if anyone wants to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/surviv...OOPvORJ9onq1uz81JiIzpllT9YBL_bDLODDiIPestlJYg
 
Last edited:
chris f said:
... If this bill doesn't get changed it will kill a ton of small business which I can't imagine was its original intent - I've got to think this was aimed at the huge corporations...
Click to expand...
It was indeed aimed against the small independent businesses and pro unions, which are much easier to organize in large shops. The effects of the laws are increases in the cost of production, which is why Hollywood has a problem with the "runaways".

https://www.dailynews.com/2014/01/04/why-tv-film-production-is-running-away-from-hollywood/

And this takes place despite Hollywood being firmly behind the top political figures of the state.
 
chris f said:
My hunch is that this will eventually work itself out for us video professionals through an exemption (or one of the lawsuits). There are so many exemptions in this law already that almost include video that it seems like we were an oversight by lawmakers that didn't think of us. I'm going to an educational event for video professionals in San Diego (home of the bill) next week that is being hosted by a law firm here in town and am interested to hear what they say. If it wasn't for the "the individual setting their own hours" I think there'd be enough gray area to keep moving along as normal providing that all crew members have their own business licenses (which is like $40 a year). The only other quagmire would be production assistants because by it's very nature the role requires no specialized skill set and requires direct supervision and direction all day.

If this bill doesn't get changed it will kill a ton of small business which I can't imagine was its original intent - I've got to think this was aimed at the huge corporations.

I do think that some industries like ride share should give its drivers the option to become a full-time employee OR remain a contractor. It seems reasonable to me that multi-billion dollar companies should offer benefits and protections to its workforce seeing as they (and their personal cars) are the entire revenue generating source for those companies. Can't help but think that my Lyft driver the other night - a lady with a handicapped license plate who was super nice and a great driver, but also couldn't get out to help us load our luggage - would gladly have the option to trade some freedoms/income in exchange for an affordable health care policy bargained by a company with a HUGE pool of "employees".

Ps. Here's the event if anyone wants to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/surviv...OOPvORJ9onq1uz81JiIzpllT9YBL_bDLODDiIPestlJYg
Click to expand...

From everything I've read so far, it seems they went out of their way to INCLUDE you.

I hate to be the continual pessimist, but as you get older you see things for what they really are. Things you would have once thought were "oversights", "accidents" or crazy "conspiracy theories" actually make a lot more sense when they're deliberate actions.

But I do hope that everything does get sorted out for you guys out there.
 
I don’t think waxing politics is moving this thread forward. Would love to keep it to practical advice and experience navigating this law. End of day all of us Californian production peeps should meet with an employment law attorney to help us make our own decisions moving forward (which I plan on doing myself), but would love to read updates and cliff notes here of any meetings, articles, resources that shed light on how to navigate this specific law.

I’ll add an update after attending that meeting on Wednesday and again after I meet with a lawyer myself.

Also, a friend of mine in town has already met with a lawyer and has an appointment with the lady who wrote the law since she’s here in our town. Will forward any info that comes from there as well.
 
chris f said:
I don’t think waxing politics is moving this thread forward. Would love to keep it to practical advice and experience navigating this law...
Click to expand...
A very famous political pundit (whose name or party affiliation is unimportant to the debate) once said, "Politics will always trump the economics".

My advice is to save your pennies because lawyers will cost a lot of money. A lot more than just following laws currently on the books. Let the heavy movers serve as the hammering rams. A voice in the wilderness is silent.
 
I don’t think waxing politics is moving this thread forward. Would love to keep it to practical advice and experience navigating this law.

+1

Agreed 100% with chris f. - which is why I stay away from politics - it's OK to discuss the pro/con of AB-5, but CA-bashing is just silly and factually wrong. For independent production (non-union) folks AB-5 will have a differential impact - remember, the guilds worked with this from the get-go. Here's some background:

https://www.moviemogul.tv/blog/how-californias-new-law-effects-filmmakers

“We have carefully monitored this legislation as it was drafted and moved through the California Legislature… During that time, we conducted due diligence within our own guilds and unions, with outside tax attorneys, CPAs, and entertainment lawyers knowledgeable about our business and loan-out companies, and with legislative staff in Sacramento. These conversations were all undertaken to ensure that AB5 would not undermine the rights secured by our collective bargaining agreements, including the right to form and utilize loan-out companies.”

And chris f has exactly the right attitude - you need to get together and meet with the lawmakers to educate them, which is what I advocated from the first in this thread. You can have one of two attitudes - that the folks behind AB-5 are maliciously conspiring to bring down the CA economy, or you can have the attitude like scorsesefan said "it is well-intentioned, but flawed" and needs to be radically reformed. I am of the latter view - not because I'm dumb, naive, or polyanna, but because of plain common sense evidence (always the death of loopy conspiracy thinking!). Ask yourself, what is more plausible - the folks behind AB-5 want to tank the CA economy? Really? To what end? How is that going to make their jobs better (which entails - always - getting more and better jobs), and how is it gonna make their constituents happier to tank the economy? This is stupid - doesn't pass the smell test. It's absurd on its face. The other scenario is far more plausible - the lawmakers saw abuses where companies exploited loopholes to shortchange their workers and strip them of benefits by some clever lawyer double-talk, and decided to act. Unfortunately, as with any such law, there are unintended consequences - AB-5 was poorly researched, poorly written, poorly implemented and counter-productive... which is why I called it a combination of arrogance ("we know what is good for you") and ignorance ("uhm... I didn't know it would work out like that, oops!"). It's like the doctor who wants to cure a headache - good for him/her, as opposed to the doctor who says "just live with it". There's a problem of exploitative companies. Good on AB-5 for trying to fix it, as opposed to those who would do nothing... if we always listened to those who want to do nothing about abuses, we'd be living in Somalia. The problem is that the doctor prescribed cutting off the head... uhm... that needs to be modified - "yes doc, cutting off the head will cure the headache, but there are other undesirable effects - so we'll need to come up with a different fix, thank you for understanding!".

Now, if you think they're malicious - then there is no sense in meeting them or trying to educte them. By all means, throw up your hands and head to Alabama - it won't help anyone else, maybe it'll help you. Or, if you believe it was written by humans who regularly get stuff wrong on the first try - after all, they can't be specialists in every single job description - then the right approach is to educate them about what the consequences are, so that they can make changes - that helps everyone, and no need to uproot yourself. Running away merely leaves a big mess for others to solve - you refuse to help, so thanks for nothing. If we never reformed, we'd always be stuck with bad outcomes.

And again, for those who think this is some kind of conspiracy, you have a big problem - the same kinds of folks who came up with AB-5, were in charge of CA for the past decade - and CA is doing SPECTACULARLY FANTASTIC economically. Look over the growth of a huge state like CA - it's not easy to grow such a giant state so much, usually it's easier if you are at the bottom and small, there's room to improve. The fact that CA has had one of the highest growth rates anywhere is freakin' unbelievable. CA is the fifth largest economy of the world, and surpassed Great Britain a couple of years ago! This is insane - there are a lot more people in Great Britain than in CA, and also note, far more homogenous, while people complain about third world population and homeless in CA - and CA beat the pants off the great power Great Britain. Only Germany, Japan, China and the U.S. are ahead (all with multiples larger populations!!!). This is the most productive enclave on the planet, and an envy of the whole world. No other state in the U.S. comes within a galactic mile of the CA productivity. In fact, CA is now becoming a victim of its success - costs of living are the highest anywhere in the U.S. - too much money chasing supply... when demand outstrips supply, costs skyrocket. That's what is limiting growth in CA at the moment - if anything, slower growth might make things more sustainable long term - because nothing grows to the sky.

So the question for you CA bashers is: if the CA leadership is so bad, how come the business and economy is rocketing forward every year surpassing whole world power countries - it's the very same leadership that the non-stop bashers of CA have been railing for decades now about - how they're killing business, how they're snowflakes, nuts, and control-freaks. You can't have it both ways - your jeremaiads have proven wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again for literally decades. Look at that evidence, and BE HUMBLE - acknowlegde that you don't know everything, and hey, your economic theories are wrong in this instance, the outcome is not economic ruin, but economic boom - be humble and face reality and the limitations of your own understanding. Or continue to be delusional and proven wrong forever. If you think your prescriptions would make the CA economy better - how much better can it get from already being the best of productivity class in the world? Yeah, you got nothing. It'll be no different with AB-5 - people will come to CA exactly because of AB-5 (important caveat: once AB-5 is thoroughly reformed!!!). And guess why - because protecting the worker and human rights is a huge winner for everybody - companies who don't want that, will decamp to Alabama, and to Bangladesh, because you can abuse people there, and guess what - it's nasty. There's far less "red tape" and "business obstruction" in Bangladesh, and for that matter in Mississipi, but why are those always at the bottom of all economic stats? Sure, those states will get the "exploitative companies" business, precisely because they can exploit workers without recourse, who have no choice, because they live in a bad economic environment. But as soon as possible, such states try to get out of such conditions, and adopt laws like AB-5 - that's how Japan did it, how China is doing it (costs of doing business are rapidly going up in China, as well as worker protections... and they started with slave labor!) and this is what other states do when they mimic CA, because CA is pointing the way and inventing the future, others can only follow. They all aspire to be CA, and not "business-friendly" Alabama... including Alabama - they'd give their eye's teeth to be like CA.

That's the problem for the CA bashers - the reality does not reflect your prescriptions, the results are in, and CA is a gigantic winner, and the bashers are the losers in this argument.

Again, Rome was not built in a day. Mistakes will be made, whenever you innovate, you must first fail. The way forward is not to give up, but to take the good, and reform the bad. Same with AB-5 - reform it! That's why I support chris f 100%.

Food for thought from Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-24/california-economy-soars-above-u-k-france-and-italy
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the informative and level headed post, OldCorpse. As I've said before I believe the intent of this law was to remedy the misclassification of workers who are CLEARLY employees. Here in NY they are looking to enact an AB5 law and I hope they do so, but with the caveat that they learn from whatever mistakes CA has made, and protect the vulnerable workers that laws like this SHOULD protect without throwing a wide net that ensnares genuine independent contractors and freelancers.
 
New York state is surrounded by the similarly minded legislators (the Tri-State area), so the only danger to the independents is that jobs will move to the Southeastern US - N/S Carolina, Georgia, Florida and, perhaps, somewhere like Nashville, which has its own music/video center. To keep and recruit the large scale productions, NY offers huge financial incentives to the studios. But you'd have to be lucky to be hired by one because those are entrenched union shops.

California is in a different situation. It's surrounded by far more business friendly and cost-conscious Nevada and Arizona, not to mention its South-of-the-Border neighbor. I'd be shocked if the medium size businesses didn't take advantage of that opportunity. I'd also be shocked if the neighboring states didn't offer some incentives to those willing to relocate a few hundred miles east.

By the way, neither Arizona nor Nevada has a state income tax and the cost of living there is far lower than it is in LA and San Diego. That will be reflected in the daily rates charged by the relocated outfits.

As to the in-state employment, most jobs will drift to the unionized producers. And, the bigger they will get, the more pricing power they will have over the employees and clients that have to remain in California proper. But they will lose tons of jobs - commercials, music videos, corporate - to the independents who are legally set up across the state lines. And, as an employee, a former independent will have next to no choice over work hours, locations and fees. Everything will be handled by the upper management and an employee will have little say other than to quit.

And, if you had thought the runaway production was only for the mainstream TV and features, get ready for the same on the much lower level.
 
OK, but even if you are correct in all of your dire predictions, the sky hasn't fallen yet and until it does there is plenty that can be done including protesting locally, at the state capital, educating yourselves and your colleagues about the legal ramifications of the bill, etc.

What you call "business friendly" I call "worker hostile". And there will always be companies and workers who will remain in NY and CA despite the extra cost because of the cultural advantages of doing so. And as far a crews, generally speaking, NY and CA have some of the best and most skilled film workers in the world. There will still be some companies that hold that at a premium. I had a client that used to fly up from Miami to shoot a medical advice show (all interiors) that could have easily been shot in FLA (probably for less $) but he liked the way our NY crew did it (no offense to MIA, I'm sure there are some great crews down there).

My point is that laws are subject to change and amendment but only if there is enough public outcry to push the lawmakers to do so...
 
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/california-truckers-not-subject-to-gig-economy-law-judge-says

Well, the truckers got a reprieve due to the judge citing an interstate commerce laws. Technically speaking, the content created by the video cameras and the typewriters can be classified as "interstate commerce" too. The problem is that the specific law cited applies to the truckers only.

One has to assume that, given this precedent, others will try to chip away at the California law. It might get interesting if the client is registered out of state while the contractor is not.
 
And here we go! Just as I said, AB-5 will have to be revised and changed - and this is anticipated now by the very lawmaker who originally wrote the law. There's a lot of BS self-justification about the intent of the law, but in the end she admits that it will be amended:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-lyft-ab5-gig-economy-workers-california-194318035.html

"Gonzalez, who is aware of the grievances expressed by gig workers who find the law constrictive, said she hopes to modify AB-5 later in the year."

Ding, ding, ding, ding! Exactly as I predicted! All the doomsayers who see the destruction of CA, are wrong - yet again! AB-5 will be modified, and overall, the CA economy will benefit as it has done for so long now. Here is another article on the differing reactions of different companies - as a result of AB-5, some gain work in CA, some leave CA for other pastures:

How AB5 affects gig rivals: One gets more business, one exits California

"John Baum, a partner at San Francisco’s Hirschfeld Kraemer, also an employment lawyer representing management, saw it differently.

“California is a pretty big economy,” he said. “I can’t imagine there will be a significant percentage of businesses that choose not to do business in California.”

CA is doing very well, and with time you'll see AB-5 (once it's revised!) become yet another law that strengthens CA competitive advantage - and one day, it may move past Germany to become the FOURTH biggest economy in the world - with just a tiny population compared the giants ahead of it today - U.S., China, Japan and Germany. What a marvellous economy CA has - population about the size of Canada, but economy almost TWICE as big as Canada! Truly, the most economically productive state on the planet! The doomsayers just can't figure it out - they seem to predict doom for the past 30 years, yet CA has turned into #1 productive place on earth!

So what does the future hold? Will states that keep marching forward - making laws like AB-5, but then having the wisdom to revise - keep doing better? Seems yes (and let's focus strictly on the economic issues, not political):

Red and Blue Economies Are Heading in Sharply Different Directions

"In bluer metros, more residents have college degrees"

"And bluer metros have a more favorable job mix for the future, with fewer manufacturing jobs, a higher share of harder-to-automate “non-routine” jobs, and a higher share of jobs in occupations projected to grow faster.

These measures — education, household income, cost of living, non-routine jobs and projected job growth — are highly correlated with one another"

"Bluer metros have less year-to-year volatility of job growth"

"Home values have risen more in bluer metros than in redder ones. And blue metros have a higher prime-age employment-population ratio, even though the unemployment rate varies little by partisanship. That’s because red metros have a higher share of prime-age adults who are not in the labor force and therefore aren’t counted in the unemployment rate."

What about the famous cost of living disaster in states like CA? Well:

"Median household incomes are higher in bluer metros even after adjusting for the cost of living, which is higher in bluer metros as well."

Friends, CA will continue to boom, despite the obvious challenges. Every single state or country on this planet has challenges, so that's not unique to CA - but the question is: what is the result, and what does the future hold? The results are in - CA is a spectacular success and the future looks even brighter.

That said one of the challenges for high cost of living states is that they can lose population, as affordability becomes impossible for large numbers of people. CA - and many blue states - has certainly seen large numbers of people leave. But what's the overall picture? Here are some answers:

Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois. Hello... Where?

Well worth reading, but the bottom line is that generally, particularly for CA, the people who leave have lower income and eduction than the people who move TO CA, so the net is higher gains for CA at the end of the day - those who move on average simply don't have the income to afford CA, but CA continues to be a magnet for people who are high income, high education and wanting to start businesses. The sad part is that it seems the divisions among states continue to grow, and inequality is a bigger and bigger problem. I hope some way is found to bring us together again.
 
OldCorpse said:
And here we go! Just as I said, AB-5 will have to be revised and changed - and this is anticipated now by the very lawmaker who originally wrote the law. There's a lot of BS self-justification about the intent of the law, but in the end she admits that it will be amended:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-lyft-ab5-gig-economy-workers-california-194318035.html

"Gonzalez, who is aware of the grievances expressed by gig workers who find the law constrictive, said she hopes to modify AB-5 later in the year."

Ding, ding, ding, ding! Exactly as I predicted! All the doomsayers who see the destruction of CA, are wrong - yet again! AB-5 will be modified, and overall, the CA economy will benefit as it has done for so long now. Here is another article on the differing reactions of different companies - as a result of AB-5, some gain work in CA, some leave CA for other pastures:

How AB5 affects gig rivals: One gets more business, one exits California

"John Baum, a partner at San Francisco’s Hirschfeld Kraemer, also an employment lawyer representing management, saw it differently.

“California is a pretty big economy,” he said. “I can’t imagine there will be a significant percentage of businesses that choose not to do business in California.”

CA is doing very well, and with time you'll see AB-5 (once it's revised!) become yet another law that strengthens CA competitive advantage - and one day, it may move past Germany to become the FOURTH biggest economy in the world - with just a tiny population compared the giants ahead of it today - U.S., China, Japan and Germany. What a marvellous economy CA has - population about the size of Canada, but economy almost TWICE as big as Canada! Truly, the most economically productive state on the planet! The doomsayers just can't figure it out - they seem to predict doom for the past 30 years, yet CA has turned into #1 productive place on earth!

So what does the future hold? Will states that keep marching forward - making laws like AB-5, but then having the wisdom to revise - keep doing better? Seems yes (and let's focus strictly on the economic issues, not political):

Red and Blue Economies Are Heading in Sharply Different Directions

"In bluer metros, more residents have college degrees"

"And bluer metros have a more favorable job mix for the future, with fewer manufacturing jobs, a higher share of harder-to-automate “non-routine” jobs, and a higher share of jobs in occupations projected to grow faster.

These measures — education, household income, cost of living, non-routine jobs and projected job growth — are highly correlated with one another"

"Bluer metros have less year-to-year volatility of job growth"

"Home values have risen more in bluer metros than in redder ones. And blue metros have a higher prime-age employment-population ratio, even though the unemployment rate varies little by partisanship. That’s because red metros have a higher share of prime-age adults who are not in the labor force and therefore aren’t counted in the unemployment rate."

What about the famous cost of living disaster in states like CA? Well:

"Median household incomes are higher in bluer metros even after adjusting for the cost of living, which is higher in bluer metros as well."

Friends, CA will continue to boom, despite the obvious challenges. Every single state or country on this planet has challenges, so that's not unique to CA - but the question is: what is the result, and what does the future hold? The results are in - CA is a spectacular success and the future looks even brighter.

That said one of the challenges for high cost of living states is that they can lose population, as affordability becomes impossible for large numbers of people. CA - and many blue states - has certainly seen large numbers of people leave. But what's the overall picture? Here are some answers:

Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois. Hello... Where?

Well worth reading, but the bottom line is that generally, particularly for CA, the people who leave have lower income and eduction than the people who move TO CA, so the net is higher gains for CA at the end of the day - those who move on average simply don't have the income to afford CA, but CA continues to be a magnet for people who are high income, high education and wanting to start businesses. The sad part is that it seems the divisions among states continue to grow, and inequality is a bigger and bigger problem. I hope some way is found to bring us together again.
Click to expand...

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area and still calls it home, I support a bit of pushback against some of the things said in this thread against CA, but your posts would be more convincing if they acknowledged a few very unfortunate details. It's not good enough to just say that the educated are coming and the uneducated are leaving. Every community needs a diversity of workforce. Teachers are educated, but can't afford CA. I'm not sure I'd call a firefighter uneducated, and yet they are being priced out. The folks that need to do pretty much all of the behind the scenes in the service industries - priced out, or worse - homeless.

Yes, it is a megaforce as an economy, but it's not sustainable unless the very people creating that economy (primarily the tech, finance, and developer sectors in partnership with local and state govt.), figure out meaningful ways to give back to local community to create more balance. You can't commute 3 hours each direction to bus the table of a Google engineer...for very long.

By the way, all of my siblings are successful in CA tech, so I speak from a birds eye view AND as someone who enjoys many benefits of that privilege by proxy. Nonetheless, the number of people I see and work with on a daily basis across a huge spectrum of fields who are being priced out is a major problem. In other words, saying CA is doing fine is a bit like saying the planet and the human race are doing fine judged by production rate and capacity. Yeah, it's one metric, but it doesn't acknowledge climate change or any other critical externality. Is the fossil fuel industry doing fine? Well, yes, but....

Having said all of that, I completely share your view that AB5 was never going to stay as idiotically lacking in nuance as it first appeared and would certainly go through some amendments. Where that lands remains to be seen. I'm both a freelance musician and video production guy, so I'm doubly screwed by the current version of AB5
 
ozmorphasis said:
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area and still calls it home, I support a bit of pushback against some of the things said in this thread against CA, but your posts would be more convincing if they acknowledged a few very unfortunate details. It's not good enough to just say that the educated are coming and the uneducated are leaving. Every community needs a diversity of workforce. Teachers are educated, but can't afford CA. I'm not sure I'd call a firefighter uneducated, and yet they are being priced out. The folks that need to do pretty much all of the behind the scenes in the service industries - priced out, or worse - homeless.

Yes, it is a megaforce as an economy, but it's not sustainable unless the very people creating that economy (primarily the tech, finance, and developer sectors in partnership with local and state govt.), figure out meaningful ways to give back to local community to create more balance. You can't commute 3 hours each direction to bus the table of a Google engineer...for very long.

By the way, all of my siblings are successful in CA tech, so I speak from a birds eye view AND as someone who enjoys many benefits of that privilege by proxy. Nonetheless, the number of people I see and work with on a daily basis across a huge spectrum of fields who are being priced out is a major problem. In other words, saying CA is doing fine is a bit like saying the planet and the human race are doing fine judged by production rate and capacity. Yeah, it's one metric, but it doesn't acknowledge climate change or any other critical externality. Is the fossil fuel industry doing fine? Well, yes, but....

Having said all of that, I completely share your view that AB5 was never going to stay as idiotically lacking in nuance as it first appeared and would certainly go through some amendments. Where that lands remains to be seen. I'm both a freelance musician and video production guy, so I'm doubly screwed by the current version of AB5
Click to expand...

You know what? I can pretty much co-sign everything you wrote above. Yes, CA has all those challenges you mentioned - and when I write posts like this people probably jump to conclusions as to where I stand overall politically, but the truth is, I am highly critical of many anti-business issues in CA. I think CA is drowning in red tape, and that's something that must be addressed with extreme urgency. I really think that CA must become more business friendly. It's just that people think of different things when it comes to that - I don't support cutting sensible regulations or laws that truly protect workers just so that abusive businesses can continue to exploit people in CA... they're welcome to leave and don't let the door hit them. But CA has a mountain of idiotic regulation and NIMBYISM that is just suffocating. I am not against the idea of taxes, but the CA tax structure is moronic and highly depenedent on a very narrow base - this is often the cause of disaster when that base is hit and CA immediately is plunged into astronomical budget deficits. So, no, I don't uncritically support any nonsense that comes out of Sacramento. And yes, cost of living issues are becoming dire - you are exactly right - this is where they should focus their attention. Fix the anti-business environment, make taxes more rational and fair, do something about the cost of living, especially housing - this is what they should be focusing on, which sadly I see little evidence of.

Of course CA has challenges - tell me which place doesn't? The question is whether we'll be up for the challenge, or whether we'll hopelessly decline. Look at history. Even the greatest powers declined when they refused or were unable to meet their challenges. That said, we should not be lectured by those whose prescriptions don't work as seen by the example of other states, and whose predictions have been dead wrong for decades - if we listened to those folks, we'd be in the economic position of Mississippi. CA is inventing the future, and it must meet the challenges of the future, or face inevitable decline. To meet those challenges we need an involved citizenry - this is why I'm advocating a concerted effort to push back against bad ideas like parts of AB-5, if we don't speak up, nothing gets improved, so let your voice be heard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top