So this thing won't actually make impacts for years, most likely, but a central valley winery seems to be trying to set up a "freedom of religion" challenge in California.
Note how mealy-mouthed it is of "oh, we wouldn't discriminate, we just won't have the ceremony."
Sexual orientation is, I think, a protected class in the CA Constitution, so I see this failing on that basis, but this bullshit is here, too.
So it looks like California's new AB5 (contractors being designated full time employees and getting vacation days and healthcare) is gonna become law. Good for uber drivers. Bad for uber. Possibly bad for other industries?
I work as a contractor. I bounce around between 4 or 5 different companies, work for a month, then move on to the next project. I'm paid well enough to cover my own health insurance and take vacations. It's really hard to know how this is gonna affect me. Apparently the onus is on the employer to prove these 3 things for me to remain a contractor -
1. That the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;
2. That the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and
3. That the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as the work performed.
It seems like they won't be able to prove 1 or 2 very easily.
The whole law is strange to me. I'm not sure how these companies could provide my healthcare? Or do they only provide it for the 1 month of employment at a time?
Do you have your own company (s-corp/LLC/etc) or are you doing all these jobs as an individual?
There are exemptions in place for bona fide b2b relationships, which it sounds like you have.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I work as an individual. Some companies pay me with 1099. Some with W2. Maybe I should incorporate? I've talked about it with colleagues that have, but they don't really seem to have a clear view of the exact benefits...
(not that I'm trying to make this thread about me and how to get tax breaks. Discuss AB5 haha)
I work as an individual. Some companies pay me with 1099. Some with W2. Maybe I should incorporate? I've talked about it with colleagues that have, but they don't really seem to have a clear view of the exact benefits...
It's way outside my expertise but seems like the main benefits are tax stuff (but also more tax work) and limiting your liability, like if you got sued for some reason they couldn't attach all your personal accounts.
I dunno I couldn't find many articles talking about what the law actually says, legally (though I see found a lot of industry sponsored hit pieces saying this would KILL ALL CALIFORNIA BUSINESSES, etc), but it seems like people doing proper piecework, writing contacts, setting their own prices, etc, are probably going to be fine.
I wonder if you'll see businesses start to require people have their own corp and no longer contact with individuals as 1099s.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I work as an individual. Some companies pay me with 1099. Some with W2. Maybe I should incorporate? I've talked about it with colleagues that have, but they don't really seem to have a clear view of the exact benefits...
It's way outside my expertise but seems like the main benefits are tax stuff (but also more tax work) and limiting your liability, like if you got sued for some reason they couldn't attach all your personal accounts.
I dunno I couldn't find many articles talking about what the law actually says, legally (though I see found a lot of industry sponsored hit pieces saying this would KILL ALL CALIFORNIA BUSINESSES, etc), but it seems like people doing proper piecework, writing contacts, setting their own prices, etc, are probably going to be fine.
I wonder if you'll see businesses start to require people have their own corp and no longer contact with individuals as 1099s.
The main benefit of incorporating yourself as a contractor is that you can separate out your “salary” from business income and expenses, which also decreases your federal and state income taxes and Social Security taxes.
The danger is that you need to be scrupulous about documenting everything and need to run things by an attorney because things can go south fast if you screw up.
So it looks like California's new AB5 (contractors being designated full time employees and getting vacation days and healthcare) is gonna become law. Good for uber drivers. Bad for uber. Possibly bad for other industries?
I work as a contractor. I bounce around between 4 or 5 different companies, work for a month, then move on to the next project. I'm paid well enough to cover my own health insurance and take vacations. It's really hard to know how this is gonna affect me. Apparently the onus is on the employer to prove these 3 things for me to remain a contractor -
1. That the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;
2. That the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and
3. That the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as the work performed.
It seems like they won't be able to prove 1 or 2 very easily.
The whole law is strange to me. I'm not sure how these companies could provide my healthcare? Or do they only provide it for the 1 month of employment at a time?
I'm sure they have smart people writing the law, but from my completely unpracticed viewpoint, it seems like it'd be possible to create "contracting" shell companies to act as middlemen to provide a pretext for those points?
I work as an individual. Some companies pay me with 1099. Some with W2. Maybe I should incorporate? I've talked about it with colleagues that have, but they don't really seem to have a clear view of the exact benefits...
(not that I'm trying to make this thread about me and how to get tax breaks. Discuss AB5 haha)
@NotYou , I'm a CPA and I very much encourage you to contact a licensed CPA to give you an hour to go over potential tax savings strategies. But in general, 99% of the reason to incorporate is just liability shielding.
The main reason AB5 is a big deal is letting people demand a min wage and unemployment if they loose their source of income. If you have a number of different people you work for and you get to tell them what you charge (instead of going in and them telling you what they will pay like Uber and a bunch of "sales" jobs) you are likely a contractor.
So it looks like California's new AB5 (contractors being designated full time employees and getting vacation days and healthcare) is gonna become law. Good for uber drivers. Bad for uber. Possibly bad for other industries?
I work as a contractor. I bounce around between 4 or 5 different companies, work for a month, then move on to the next project. I'm paid well enough to cover my own health insurance and take vacations. It's really hard to know how this is gonna affect me. Apparently the onus is on the employer to prove these 3 things for me to remain a contractor -
1. That the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;
2. That the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and
3. That the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as the work performed.
It seems like they won't be able to prove 1 or 2 very easily.
The whole law is strange to me. I'm not sure how these companies could provide my healthcare? Or do they only provide it for the 1 month of employment at a time?
I'm sure they have smart people writing the law, but from my completely unpracticed viewpoint, it seems like it'd be possible to create "contracting" shell companies to act as middlemen to provide a pretext for those points?
Those exist already; I'm on a contract position that requires me to be a W2 through a staffing company so I cant sue the company I actually perform work for for lack of benefits.
Its bullshit since the staffing company is taking a cut that the company I work for is clearly willing to pay which should otherwise go to me and I liked being a 1099, but when the proles feel like they can tell the boss man to go fuck themselves I guess its time for things to change.
This is maybe one of the bigger deals that I haven't seen a whole lot of buzz about? Article is about the unemployment problems in the central valley, and how this bill will impact it, but it looks like the legislature is (fucking FINALLY) taking agriculture's water usage seriously.
Water shortages, already the scourge of the Valley, are about to get worse. A powerful state law called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will curb access to water and shrink agriculture’s footprint in the next two decades. Thousands of acres will be turned into solar-energy farms and other non-agricultural uses. The long-term effect of climate change, meanwhile, will squeeze water supplies even more.
All of which suggests a bleak future for a region that is among America’s poorest. In July, the latest month for which national statistics were available, six of the ten highest metropolitan unemployment rates in the country were found in the Valley, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau’s records cover 389 metropolitan areas.
The groundwater law affects affects the whole state but will have its greatest impact in the Valley, where farmers pumped so much groundwater during the drought that the aquifers became seriously depleted and portions of the Valley floor literally sank.
Farmers will have to begin moving toward sustainability in January. They’ll have 20 years to complete the task, but the transition could be excruciating. Forecasters at the Public Policy Institute of California say at least 535,000 acres will be permanently retired. That’s about one-tenth of the irrigated farmland in a place that leads the nation in the production of milk, almonds, table grapes and a cornucopia of other commodities.
And that’s if things go well; the institute says the law could take out as many as 750,000 acres in the Valley unless farmers can augment their water supplies somehow. If clumped together, that would be enough land to cover all of the agricultural acreage in San Joaquin County, where farming is a $2.5 billion-a-year business.
Some Valley leaders say the problem might be far bigger than even the Public Policy Institute estimates. Jason Phillips, chief executive of the Friant Water Authority, which delivers water to farmers on the Valley’s east side from the federal government’s Central Valley Project, said as many as as 1 million acres could be retired under a worst-case scenario, with a disastrous effect on unemployment.
I want to see some legislation to cut off the water bottling companies from using the mountain springs for a pittance they then turn around and resell for a massive markup.
Winds are expected to pick up and turn toward the coast late Tuesday night, bringing cool, dry gusts that could spread fires and prompt pre-emptive power shut-offs that leave up to more than a quarter-million Bay Area customers without electricity for days.
As I understand it this is a new policy -- they did it over in the eastern Sierra a few weeks ago.
I dunno if unpredictably cutting off power to huge regions of the state is better?
so pay to maintain your lines so they work properly or rolling blackouts. I think both are pretty good indications that the state should either get a new company to run it or do it themselves as PG&E clearly cannot manage it.
Yeah I'm a bit perplexed that the actual solution to the danger of wildfires from breaking power lines is let's just not have electricity when it's windy and dry.
I think I could handle it better if it was being put forth as a stopgap interim plan while something else is worked out. But that doesn't seem to be the story.
If only the billionaire geniuses could work on a solution for this instead of spending all their brain cells trying to find ways to get us addicted to our phones to generate more data to sell
If only the billionaire geniuses could work on a solution for this instead of spending all their brain cells trying to find ways to get us addicted to our phones to generate more data to sell
There are plenty of people working hard on this problem. Its just that the solution is "Bury the power lines" which is expensive.
Yeah I'm a bit perplexed that the actual solution to the danger of wildfires from breaking power lines is let's just not have electricity when it's windy and dry.
I think I could handle it better if it was being put forth as a stopgap interim plan while something else is worked out. But that doesn't seem to be the story.
This seems to be a pretty clear case of malicious compliance.
Yeah I'm a bit perplexed that the actual solution to the danger of wildfires from breaking power lines is let's just not have electricity when it's windy and dry.
I think I could handle it better if it was being put forth as a stopgap interim plan while something else is worked out. But that doesn't seem to be the story.
This seems to be a pretty clear case of malicious compliance.
It does seem to be a bit insane. They are planning on turning off the power for up to a week it seems, and then it will have to be on and off for months while these winds blow. People are certainly going to die due to stop lights not working etc. It seems like there's no real net gain here. Either have forest fires maybe, or have people die and lose millions of dollars during power outages.
If they need to turn the lines off, then they need to build multi MWh local battery stations so that power can come back on as much as possible. Run specific lines which lead to the battery stations and give people power for a few hours a day at least
Last time this sort of thing happened, ca got the governator and a ton of total recall memes courtesy Enron. Think I still have one of the t-shirts.
I suspect it will be easier to find the proper target for blame this time around.
Oh cool, so you know where to find Gray Davis?
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The mitigation effect of turning off the power isn't nothing. That said, I feel like any other business whose primary solution to a product flaw is to stop doing business would be, well, out of business pretty fast.
+3
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
So at what point does California just take over PG&E and call it a day?
I can't even imagine how much it would cost to retrofit the entire grid.
Or even just the vulnerable parts. Maybe its less than I think, but I don't even know how to start making that estimate.
Sure, but this is work that should have been done over the last two decades during normal maintenance. They have been running with profits as a (near) monopoly utility while short changing proper saftey costs.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Growing up in Chico, the power would go out at least twice a year for a day or two. I can remember it going out long enough that all the food in our fridge would spoil about a dozen times. It was a reliable enough event that everyone kept a camper stovetop around if they didn't have a grill.
Sure, I would actually find that sort of unsurprising if Chico were as low population, or rural as some little mountain town way up in the Sierra Nevadas... it isn't. It's a super flat city in the valley that sees snow once every 3 decades that has two colleges and three hospitals, including the level 2 trauma hospital for that area of Northern California.
The rates they charge for electricity are absolutely insane. My bill up in Portland, OR is never over $150. That's with two people who work different hours, meaning there's lights and computers on all times of the day.
Walnut Creek, Concord, Richmond, Oakland, Pleasant Hill and San Mateo each for at least 6 months and in the case of Concord and Oakland, over 5 years I never saw a bill less than 200$ for significantly smaller apartments and in the case of all the locations near water they didn't even have AC. In Concord/Pleasant Hill/Walnut Creek we routinely had bills over 300$ in the summer. Every time they'd come up with some new "smart meter" our bill would go up 10-20%.
PG&E has been hard fucking California for at least 40 years, probably longer. All assets should have been seized back during the Enron debacle.
Edit:
We had a transformer in our back yard EXPLODE one year because of a power fluctuation due to something happening at a substation. The technicians out there were standing in our back yard looking up at a blackened smoking pole very loudly talking about how it was a wonder that model had lasted as long as it had. It took them almost a week to allocate a crew to come up and replace it. It took down all the electricity on only our block so we all ferried food across the street to neighbors so it wouldn't go bad. It was actually kind of cool to meet people like that, but fuck PG&E.
Edit2: I actually knew a few people who worked at PG&E when I was a kid, they were as frustrated as everyone else it seemed.
They also somehow didn't have enough foresight to see that there'd be a high demand for the address search and maps to see if your area may be affected and their website is barely working.
Plus they pulled the more accurate address search function in lieu of just the general area maps. Local newspaper sites have taken it upon themselves to mirror the maps.
Our strategy was call neighbors and people we knew across town/other cities and ask "hey, is your power out? like it was the 1940's" well into the era of the internet.
PG&E has been hard fucking California for at least 40 years, probably longer. All assets should have been seized back during the Enron debacle.
You can thank the California gubinatorial recall for why that didn't happen. Part of why the recall got pushed was to have the Enron fallout softpedaled.
PG&E has been hard fucking California for at least 40 years, probably longer. All assets should have been seized back during the Enron debacle.
You can thank the California gubinatorial recall for why that didn't happen. Part of why the recall got pushed was to have the Enron fallout softpedaled.
There’s a direct line between Enron, the blackouts, the recall, and the collapse of the GOP in California.
Man that recall vote system was madness. I really don't understand how anyone ever thought it was a good idea to have a system that allows you to recall a governor with a majority and then win the governorship with a plurality in the low 20%.
The turning off power is ridiculous. Any utility that operates at ths high of a monopoly level is granted it on the premise it does its job, in this case provide power. If their solution is turning the power off then they are not doing the job and should be "fired". I don't care how much it eats into their bottom line, the have the responsibility of safely providing power. Bury the lines, retro fit it, whatever. It is your job to do these things. They didn't, so seize the corporate assets, jail the higher ups, and pass this on to somebody who can/will do the job.
"If nothing is impossible, than would it not be impossible to find something that you could not do?" - Me
Hey do you need electricity to keep yourself alive? Well you better get moving. Oh you can't?
Well you can call 911 for an ambulance to the hospital. That'll be financially crippling? That sucks.
How are people suppose to call 911 if power is out...
Every death and injury that results from this needs to be laid on PG&E in civil and criminal terms. This is completely a man made disaster that is a result of thier business decisions.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Posts
How isn't the response "yo dawg, you knew the law when you opened your property to be rented for events, get fucked"
It's like moving into an apartment above a bar and complaining about noise (yes I realize there are assholes in this world that do this).
Do you have your own company (s-corp/LLC/etc) or are you doing all these jobs as an individual?
There are exemptions in place for bona fide b2b relationships, which it sounds like you have.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
(not that I'm trying to make this thread about me and how to get tax breaks. Discuss AB5 haha)
It's way outside my expertise but seems like the main benefits are tax stuff (but also more tax work) and limiting your liability, like if you got sued for some reason they couldn't attach all your personal accounts.
I dunno I couldn't find many articles talking about what the law actually says, legally (though I see found a lot of industry sponsored hit pieces saying this would KILL ALL CALIFORNIA BUSINESSES, etc), but it seems like people doing proper piecework, writing contacts, setting their own prices, etc, are probably going to be fine.
I wonder if you'll see businesses start to require people have their own corp and no longer contact with individuals as 1099s.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
The main benefit of incorporating yourself as a contractor is that you can separate out your “salary” from business income and expenses, which also decreases your federal and state income taxes and Social Security taxes.
The danger is that you need to be scrupulous about documenting everything and need to run things by an attorney because things can go south fast if you screw up.
I'm sure they have smart people writing the law, but from my completely unpracticed viewpoint, it seems like it'd be possible to create "contracting" shell companies to act as middlemen to provide a pretext for those points?
@NotYou , I'm a CPA and I very much encourage you to contact a licensed CPA to give you an hour to go over potential tax savings strategies. But in general, 99% of the reason to incorporate is just liability shielding.
The main reason AB5 is a big deal is letting people demand a min wage and unemployment if they loose their source of income. If you have a number of different people you work for and you get to tell them what you charge (instead of going in and them telling you what they will pay like Uber and a bunch of "sales" jobs) you are likely a contractor.
Those exist already; I'm on a contract position that requires me to be a W2 through a staffing company so I cant sue the company I actually perform work for for lack of benefits.
Its bullshit since the staffing company is taking a cut that the company I work for is clearly willing to pay which should otherwise go to me and I liked being a 1099, but when the proles feel like they can tell the boss man to go fuck themselves I guess its time for things to change.
edit- swapped to a link from the economy thread, since I'm pretty sure the SF Chronicle is pay walled these days.
This is maybe one of the bigger deals that I haven't seen a whole lot of buzz about? Article is about the unemployment problems in the central valley, and how this bill will impact it, but it looks like the legislature is (fucking FINALLY) taking agriculture's water usage seriously.
As I understand it this is a new policy -- they did it over in the eastern Sierra a few weeks ago.
I dunno if unpredictably cutting off power to huge regions of the state is better?
Which is just making me want the utility to be taken over by the state even more, frankly.
I'm not directly effected by it, but it's kinda ridiculous.
I think I could handle it better if it was being put forth as a stopgap interim plan while something else is worked out. But that doesn't seem to be the story.
There are plenty of people working hard on this problem. Its just that the solution is "Bury the power lines" which is expensive.
This seems to be a pretty clear case of malicious compliance.
It does seem to be a bit insane. They are planning on turning off the power for up to a week it seems, and then it will have to be on and off for months while these winds blow. People are certainly going to die due to stop lights not working etc. It seems like there's no real net gain here. Either have forest fires maybe, or have people die and lose millions of dollars during power outages.
If they need to turn the lines off, then they need to build multi MWh local battery stations so that power can come back on as much as possible. Run specific lines which lead to the battery stations and give people power for a few hours a day at least
I suspect it will be easier to find the proper target for blame this time around.
Oh cool, so you know where to find Gray Davis?
PG&E already has it's back to the wall with the upcoming trial, the bankruptcy stuff and god knows what else. No need to parcel out blame this time.
Or even just the vulnerable parts. Maybe its less than I think, but I don't even know how to start making that estimate.
Sure, but this is work that should have been done over the last two decades during normal maintenance. They have been running with profits as a (near) monopoly utility while short changing proper saftey costs.
Sure, I would actually find that sort of unsurprising if Chico were as low population, or rural as some little mountain town way up in the Sierra Nevadas... it isn't. It's a super flat city in the valley that sees snow once every 3 decades that has two colleges and three hospitals, including the level 2 trauma hospital for that area of Northern California.
The rates they charge for electricity are absolutely insane. My bill up in Portland, OR is never over $150. That's with two people who work different hours, meaning there's lights and computers on all times of the day.
Walnut Creek, Concord, Richmond, Oakland, Pleasant Hill and San Mateo each for at least 6 months and in the case of Concord and Oakland, over 5 years I never saw a bill less than 200$ for significantly smaller apartments and in the case of all the locations near water they didn't even have AC. In Concord/Pleasant Hill/Walnut Creek we routinely had bills over 300$ in the summer. Every time they'd come up with some new "smart meter" our bill would go up 10-20%.
PG&E has been hard fucking California for at least 40 years, probably longer. All assets should have been seized back during the Enron debacle.
Edit:
We had a transformer in our back yard EXPLODE one year because of a power fluctuation due to something happening at a substation. The technicians out there were standing in our back yard looking up at a blackened smoking pole very loudly talking about how it was a wonder that model had lasted as long as it had. It took them almost a week to allocate a crew to come up and replace it. It took down all the electricity on only our block so we all ferried food across the street to neighbors so it wouldn't go bad. It was actually kind of cool to meet people like that, but fuck PG&E.
Edit2: I actually knew a few people who worked at PG&E when I was a kid, they were as frustrated as everyone else it seemed.
Plus they pulled the more accurate address search function in lieu of just the general area maps. Local newspaper sites have taken it upon themselves to mirror the maps.
You can thank the California gubinatorial recall for why that didn't happen. Part of why the recall got pushed was to have the Enron fallout softpedaled.
There’s a direct line between Enron, the blackouts, the recall, and the collapse of the GOP in California.
Well you can call 911 for an ambulance to the hospital. That'll be financially crippling? That sucks.
PG&E really loves its terror campaigns.
Every death and injury that results from this needs to be laid on PG&E in civil and criminal terms. This is completely a man made disaster that is a result of thier business decisions.