Greetings, dear readers!
Do you ever sit back, with your feet on your desk, a fine scotch in your glass, and a puzzle dancing in your mind – why can’t we have nice things? Well, dear reader, THIS IS WHY!
Assembly Bill 305 has passed both the Senate and the Assembly and is now headed for the Governor’s desk. If signed into law, it would prevent apportionment of permanent disability to pregnancy, menopause, or, in the case of psychiatric injuries, sexual harassment, menopause, or pregnancy.
I’m sure the proponents of this bill see themselves as some sort of champions for the oppressed. Certainly, it’s not fair that women face some difficulties not visited on men. Surely, the world would be a better place if no one ever got hurt. When people do get hurt, the world would be a better place if one’s sex did not exacerbate the burden such injury places on the injured. Can’t we all think of ways the world could be a better place?
In fact, what we’re going to see is a further increase in the cost of labor in California. Do you want to see the effect of such policies in the aggregate? Take a look at data recently released by the IRS for 2012-2013. California continues to see a dramatic decline in tax-generating population (and tax dollars as well).
What goes with these particular individuals, as they cross state lines? Jobs. These are the jobs that generate revenue that keeps the government lights on and our absurdly horrible roads in one of California’s two favorite conditions – in need of repair or closed for repair. California will continue to lose the jobs and services we all enjoy and rely on to other states (or to the abyss).
Or, we can look forward to having many of those jobs replaced by automation: Fast-Food will replace workers with kiosks; warehouses will replace workers with machines; even manufacturing will continue to go automated, as one company in Australia reported replacing 60 welders with 3 robots costing $150,000 each. These results neither generate income tax revenue for state coffers, nor provide employment for humble bloggers of the workers’ compensation defense variety.
This insanity has to stop. It is not unusual for California’s legislature to have absolutely no understanding of the difficulties faced by small businesses in keeping the lights on. It is, however, a bit of a surprise that the same legislators are equally deaf to the difficulty labor is facing in finding work. Minimum wage can be raised to $1,000 per hour, and PD benefits can be magnified 100 fold, but neither will benefits Californians who cannot find work.
Putting things in proportion, dear readers, I get it – the small increase this particular bill will cause in the cost of workers’ compensation coverage is not to blame for the difficulty that industries employing workers earning less than $100,000 per year are facing in California. But, as stated before, it is a symptom of a disease, or, rather, a diseased mindset when it comes to how California functions.