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Comment by standyro | Hacker News Reader

Well, good riddance.

I'm happy to live in California and have a social safety net when I lost my job during the pandemic and had over a year of EDD unemployment payments to keep me afloat. In other states, companies like yours dodge all responsibility for society and their employees (for better or worse)

I heard horror stories dealing with unemployment during the pandemic in states like Tennessee or New Jersey.

Not a fan of government bureaucracy but taking care of your employees is part of running a business.

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Okay, but the social safety net is paid for by people and businesses. If you make the people miserable and the business difficult, your social safety net cannot be funded by good feelings.

Also, considering the high cost of living, homeless encampments rife with 18th century communicable diseases, and staggering crime, I'm not sure how safe your net is.

I did that. I paid all of the employment-related taxes and filed all of the paperwork, including with EDD.

This article is about income taxes, franchise fees, and absurd levels of paperwork.

Nobody benefits from excessive paperwork and overreaching bureaucracy, not even the unemployed.

Sounds like from the article California is actively disincentivizing companies from hiring W2 from there on a remote basis. If companies are incentivized to do 1099, how is that helping anybody?

On the other hand by living in a state with no income tax I can save that money for retirement or if I'm unemployed. I'd rather manage it myself than having the state manage it.

There's a serious cost to allowing you to manage it yourself - many of those who are "managing it themselves" do not understand that they're in charge of their own unemployment or retirement, and even of those who are, some proportion will go bust through essentially no fault of their own.

Now, the state has a bunch of citizens who are unable to meet the basic necessities of life in situations of unemployment or retirement. Is it really appropriate to let these people become homeless? Die in the streets?

Charities fill that role. People can make their own decisions, they don't need the government making it for them.

Some people prefer to "take care of their employees" by paying them well instead of funding a social safety net. That's not "dodging all responsibility". How about you just take a higher paycheck and save it yourself? As for me, I won't hire in California now for exactly this reason, I am not going to fund their soycialist programs (like EDD unemployment).

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