[vic20forever]

...and those unemployed people will find better jobs with other companies, since all California companies are required to comply with the new law, and the collective amount of work performed by California companies (and thus the collective number of workers required to do this work) is not affected by the new law.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Why wouldn't the collective amount of work performed by California companies be affected? It seems very likely that consolidating a lot of contractors into a few employees would reduce the total number of working hours needed.

[Matticus_Rex]

The collective amount of work performed by California companies is absolutely affected by the new law, because it's not a constant. The amount of work a company has to do is affected by the cost of performance. If costs go up, a lot of work is no longer affordable to complete, so that work doesn't happen.

[larrywright]

Except that there are 49 other states that don’t have meddlesome legislation like this.