This is why employment law needs to be take away from the states - have one federally defined set of laws - stops a race to the bottom.
I prefer keeping many things at the state level. It’s much more difficult to be involved in government when you’re trying to vote in a pool of 350,000,000 people with different interests. Democracies lose effectiveness as population increases.
There is a good argument (for the good of the country as a whole) that sales tax should be harmonised.
Over time I've become more interested in the loose confederation of states and decentralization of power over consolidation of power at the hands of the federal government. I think the US has too large of a population with an increasing amount of differences to really effectively govern. If parents want to teach kids that the earth was created 6,000 years ago in their state, who am I to say otherwise? Vote with your feet and $$. If I don't like how California handles businesses like Uber and Lyft, same thing. At least at the state level though you right now have some reasonable measure of involvement. I can email my state representative and actually get a response. My federal one? Not a chance.
In order for states to take back power they need the income.
It's not that hard to imagine a world where Chester Cheeto wins in a landslide, the Republicans get a healthy majority in congress and the Kochs convince them to repeal most existing federal labor law.
Will you be clamoring for federal labor and employment law then?
Sure, there might be 40-something states with lower cost of doing business than CA. But is that status quo really worse than one where the federal government both controls employment law and guts it? If CA really is doing it right then surely the people working menial jobs will be better off, have more income, spend more income and their economy will grow, the rules will be a net-positive overall and other states will adopt similar ones.
One could certainly be overly optimistic about that happening. Best case, it makes "a federal issue" out of something at a time when political divisiveness is already at intolerable levels. At least now Alabama and California can disappointedly shake their damn heads at one another instead of being engaged in active opposition.