That’s what they did with AB5, and also decided to regulate lucrative freelance gigs while they were at it. The result however wasn’t that companies hired former contractors as employees; no they just farm all their freelance work to out of state freelancers.
I'm down.
I never really understand some arguments with people who think most regulation is bad and not voted in blood.
I don’t see how that would help the poor. Fighting poverty is done by giving the impoverished more opportunities, not less.
Simply put, regulating all jobs to pay a livable wage won’t make those jobs suddenly do so. It will instead make those jobs disappear, as the employer no longer making any money.
That's demonstrably not true as written. UK requires paying over living wage at 25yo and minimum wage before. The low-skilled jobs have not disappeared.
But think about what it really means as you wrote it: you don't think people doing low skill work deserve to not live in poverty. That is what living wage means. If we can't afford people to earn living wage as a default, it's a problem with general economy that needs to be addressed - if killing jobs that can't afford workers is a first step, it will have to happen at some point. (Ideally we'd have a different approach, maybe a UBI, or another highway network project, or something else)
This is a nicely worded "let them fight for scraps" when contrasted with the idea of living wage. This is the hill I'm willing to die on. A job opportunity under living wage may help separate people survive today, but it's a terrible idea for everyone long term.
At any point Vietnam or Cambodia could mandate that all jobs must pay US or Europe level wages. But doing so would not be an instant shortcut to people actually making those wages and being a developed country. If it really was that simple at least one country in the world would have used that trick.
Certainly some economic arguments can be disingenuous (some of the promises around tax cuts come to mind). But some arguments around which policies are effective are reasonable and I think the minimum wage issue is one of them.
I think the idea behind high minimum wages actually is to create more good jobs, by squeezing business that employ minimum wage workers and hoping that they can cut profits and/or raise prices (and if they raise prices, that it doesn't reduce their customers too much and cause them to lay people off or go under).
An alternative is wage supports like the earned income tax credit, where instead of squeezing businesses that employ minimum wage workers specifically you just tax everybody, and use that to artificially boost up the income of low wage workers. This has less risk of forcing low-income people into unemployment than raising the minimum wage and can provide them the same income, at the expense of high-income people having to pay more taxes.
Another alternative is trying to drive down unemployment super low, so businesses have trouble finding people and actually need to start bidding up wages to get anyone. This will cause businesses that can't afford higher wages to close, but that doesn't cause unemployment because those employees have moved on already. A labor shortage also makes it easy to find a job and employers can't be too picky (helping people fresh out of college, etc). This seems like the most ideal scenario but also the least straightforward to get via policy.
IMO living wage is an important goal but there are reasonable criticisms about strategy (1) compared to the others (especially wage supports which provides the same immediate benefit without risking forcing people out of a job).
Politicians, political interests, corruption, graft and many other factors influence legislation and most regulation has not had the intended consequences, often creating more problems than it solves.
Do you know that's the case, or do you just mean "that's what they said!" It's in their interest to say they just can't afford to treat their workers better- that they'll be forced to shut down- regardless of whether or not they can afford to.
Remember, there's a history of just this kind of stunt with these particular actors. So, personally, I'm very wary of taking their statements at face value!
And yet, here we are, years later, with the 40 hour work week and companies somehow successfully surviving.
But we did ensure that workers at the low end aren't allowed the same flexibility as the higher paid employees, along with a nice demeaning time clock to punch every day.
Like I mentioned in the post above, regulations don’t exist in a vacuum, just because you say something should be a certain way doesn’t mean it will be. There are costs, and Uber and Lyft have determined that it’s not economically feasible for them keep operating in California under those regulations.
If we’re ok with California regulators dictating what jobs should exist regardless of what the market can support, then this is the result.