I'm leaning towards a strong yes on Prop 22. AB5 had good intentions, but they executed horribly. My wife is a small business owner, and she can't really hire local 1099s to help her with group therapy sessions (she's a psychologist) - because that falls outside of "the normal scope of the hiring organization’s business", and she couldn't afford to hire a W2 full time employee. They needed to do a much better job of writing the rules for that bill.
We have a GOOD income, and we can not afford to live in the Bay Area long term, if you want that home to be of reasonable size, in a good school district, have a yard, and a decent view of something. We're likely going to move to SD, where at least if you can scrabble enough cash to get a 1.5M home, you'll get a home with a view, and a yard, and a decent school.
Move to Naperville, You'll get this for $1.5 million, and the public schools are as good as anywhere in the country. https://www.redfin.com/IL/Naperville/2275-Lisson-Rd-60565/home/23396977 Our weather, of course, is better than San Diego's, too.
I may as well lodge my discontent over the entire concept of Ballot Initiatives. Shall we make a wide ranging and impacting law? Let's ask these surfer dudes smoking pot on a beach. Surely they'll have enough knowledge on this matter.
Hell, I don't feel like I have enough policy knowledge to truly respond to this stuff. How the ******** should I definitively know how these tax changes and repeals will impact economic outcomes in California? Do I look like an economist to you? I'm just some random Data Analyst who watches sports and reads books, and gets a bunch of news from Twitter and newspapers. Those are not qualifications for me to make decisions on school bonds.
I saw a weird endorsement for Proposition 16 today. Proposition 16 will re-establish affirmative action in state universities, which was removed by Proposition 209 in 1996. You see, back in the 90s (*), Republicans still had some influence on state politics - California voted for a Republican for President as recently as 1988 (G.H.W. Bush) and elected a Republican governor (Pete Wilson) in 1990 and 1994 (Schwarzenegger doesn't really count since he got elected under weird circumstances in the recall election). But the 90s were also a time when bad Republican ideas could still be approved in statewide propositions, such as proposition 187 in 1994 and proposition 209 in 1996. In other words, California wasn't solid deep blue back in the 90s - people who look at California today may not realize that it was still kinda purple less than 30 years ago. So back to proposition 16 - it is trying to undo proposition 209 from 1996, which was supposed to be one of those "I don't see color" things that libertarians like to profess while ignoring the structural racism that exists in society. I understand there are arguments against affirmative action - there was some discussion in the Racism thread on the main P&CE forum a week or two ago - but to me, this proposition is binary, either we put pre-1996 affirmative action back on the books, or we don't, and if Republicans are opposed to this because they prefer white supremacy, I'm not going to join them because it's not good enough. Maybe people who have better ideas for replacing affirmative action can put those ideas on the ballot next time - for now, the choice is affirmative action or agree with Republicans. Anyways, I'll post the endorsement in tweet form since that's how I saw it. We are committed to ending discrimination wherever it may be and leveling the playing field for ALL Californians. That’s why today, we join the @warriors, @SFGiants, @Athletics, @49ers, @SanJoseSharks & @oaklandrootssc are in endorsing #YesOnProp16. pic.twitter.com/MVAQr1GFa1— San Jose Earthquakes (@SJEarthquakes) August 19, 2020 A bunch of Bay Area pro sports teams - I think this is all of the major league teams in the area, since the Raiders have left for Las Vegas - but I'm not sure why the third division Oakland Roots soccer team is here, what, were the Sonoma County Sol unavailable? - anyways, a bunch of pro sports teams have come out in favor of Proposition 16. I'm not sure why they decided to weigh in. It seems unusual for sportsball teams to be taking a side in a partisan issue - I mean, Republicans buy tickets to ballgames too. I'm not sure why they would care one way or the other, or why they would risk alienating a subset (possibly a tiny subset, but still...) of their potential fan base. (*) back in the 90s, I wasn't on a very famous TV show, but you might hear the Bojack Horseman theme song when you read that phrase.
I've actually got some doubts about whether this passes. Like in the 1990s, I actually think affirmative action (especially as it applies to higher education) cuts across the liberal coalition.
Lyft is shutting down tonight, Uber likely to follow. In no way am I defending the exploitation of Uber/Lyft drivers by Uber/Lyft...what AB5 does is the wrong way to fix it. This law needs to go
That's pretty much the conclusion that I have come to as well. The goal of AB5 was to protect gig workers, but it broke a bunch of other industries. People in those other industries tried to talk to the legislators to get the problems fixed before the bill was passed, and the legislators didn't listen, they just barreled on ahead with their broken solution. That's a failure of legislation - they should have written better legislation to not break stuff that didn't need to be broken.
I've never done Lyft or Uber. Back in Pittsburgh, PA, in the 00's, there were all sorts of unmarked cabs (forget the general name), and I took a few of those. Always kind of creeped out, but they were much more abundant than Yellow.
Ehhhhh. On the other hand, maybe those companies should have actually built their company correctly and paid their workers what they were actually worth. The abuse of the "independent contractor" label is rampant within the US labor force and the entire "gig economy" is built on it. People talk about how disruptive companies like Uber and Lyft are, but the main reason for that isn't because of the tech, it was because they underpaid their workers and were able to undercut their competitors on price.
That's fair, but the way the law was written it means my wife can't hire a part time contractor, and there's a huge difference between 1099 workers and W-2 workers. That's the problem. The way they wrote that law it had WAY too many fallouts.
While I'm somewhat sympathetic to your wife, there are ways to adjust for the increased costs of hiring a part time employee vs. a part time contractor. Which is an entirely different issue with the US economy and why it is broken.
I will help Nacional TJ A judge extended the timeline before they have to comply or shutdown. They are still trying to argue that the new law does not apply to them
Except that it is mostly the contractors themselves who are the most outspoken against this atrocity of a bill. Really if the legislators wanted to kick out Uber and Lyft from California they could have just outlawed them outright without screwing with all those workers who chose their careers and their industries precisely because they wanted the freedom to work independently as contractors, and have been doing so successfully for many years. This bill is an example of Big Brother knows best at its worst.
As one of those workers who chose their career and their industry precisely because they wanted the freedom to work independently as contractors, I can tell you unequivocally that none of us wants to be an independent contractor. It just turns out that the companies that used to hire people don't want to be on the hook for our guaranteed salaries or our benefits. Being a gig worker is an objectively shitty life. It's 1:14am EST and I've been working non stop since 8am. Next week I'll be watching Oprah all day every day.