California is beating all other states when it comes to giving residents enough incentives to flee. With the Golden State’s recently enacted AB5 law now scaring companies from hiring freelancers, things are about to get even worse. Despite the despair of many who rely on freelance work to pay the bills, bureaucrats are unimpressed, saying they simply don’t believe the naysayers.
Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, AB5’s author, has made a name for herself for continuing to deny charges that her bill is hurting workers, claiming her intentions were good. But the claim that forcing companies to reclassify freelancers as employees, AB5’s core goal, hasn’t aged nicely, especially as workers in a variety of fields, from rideshare drivers to journalists, complain about their plummeting earnings.
On Twitter, it’s clear the new law is upsetting both the left and the right. Users such as conservative commentator and Redstate editor Kira Davis, journalist and beer enthusiast Beth Demmon, disabled essayist and film critic Kristen Lopez, and “All-American Muslim Girl” author Nadine Jolie Courtney are all openly concerned about their future, due to the fact that media outlets are no longer seeking to publish their work. Despite their public display of concern regarding AB5 and how the law will further impact their careers, Gonzalez seems oblivious as to how her bill could hurt anybody.
In a recent interview on local San Diego TV station KUSI, the assemblywoman dismissed concerns about AB5, going as far as saying that the complaints of a freelance translator who says she’s having a hard time getting jobs were nothing but lies.
“I’m sorry, and I feel that she does feel that way. But, I don’t think it’s true.”
In the past, the assemblywoman lost her cool and resorted to profanity on Twitter when responding to a critic who was saying people were no longer going to be able to get more side gigs thanks to her bill.
Clearly, the lawmaker sees no problem with people losing their livelihoods thanks to her work.
As California sees an exodus of working-class families in the works, rules like AB5 provide workers infinite more incentives to move elsewhere. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely nothing that will disarm prideful bureaucrats like Gonzalez — and that’s by design.
Lawmakers have no incentives to worry about the outcome of their bills.
Feel-good promises are what voters are all about, and politicians aren’t in the business to help — they are in it to get reelected. By the next election cycle, few if any, will remember that the San Diego Democrat was to blame for the despair of thousands of Californians.
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