Free Republic

When the world’s richest man left California — taking his multitrillion electric car and space companies with him — the Golden State lost out on billions of dollars in economic benefits. Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its record-breaking IPO on Friday, making him the world’s first trillionaire while enriching many employees and investors. Musk didn’t travel to the New York Stock Exchange for the ceremonial bell ringing, instead choosing to celebrate at his company’s headquarters in South Texas — surrounded by some of the estimated 4,000 millionaires he created through the public offering. It was a symbolic move for Musk, who’s...

Yesterday afternoon I wrote this:I suspect that tomorrow the real work of demagoguery will begin and we'll start seeing thousands of voices echoing whatever Bernie Sanders has to say about it. Tonight is the calm before the storm.As it turned out, we didn't have to wait until today for the ritual denunciations of Elon Musk to begin. The Globe and Mail in Canada was already on it with this article:The Globe and Mail @globeandmail · Follow Opinion: SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here’s how to properly hate himThe article makes the case that it's not Musk's wealth...

In a post back in January, commenting on the November 2025 off-year elections, I remarked that the buzz-word of the moment for the Democrats appeared to be “affordability.” Many credited that theme as being the winning issue that took the Virginia and New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidates (Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill) over the top. And yet the policies that Spanberger and Sherrill had advocated as the centerpieces of their “affordability” agendas were taken from the playbooks of California and New York, otherwise known as the leading states for intentionally driving up costs for their residents. Anybody could see that...

Companies that rely on the gig economy model for workers scored a big win in courts Monday after an appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that previously found Proposition 22 illegal. Proposition 22 passed by a wide margin in November 2020, exempting app-based gig economy drivers from California’s terrible AB5 law and allowing them to continue to work as independent contractors. However, almost a year later, it was ruled unconstitutional by a California court. But a legal challenge to that ruling carried on, and a year and a half later, those app-based companies scored a victory, according to the...

There seem to be another one of these stories cropping up every week. The state of California has been waging a war on the gig economy for quite a while now and they may wind up winning, assuming they can drive the companies involved (along with most of their workers) out of the state. Uber, Lyft and Airbnb are the state government’s favorite targets, but there are other, smaller services feeling the pinch as well. Also, writers are being shut out by these recent actions.At Forbes, Paco Freire takes a deep dive into the impact this is having on...

We’ve known this was coming for some time, but California is now ready to vote on Assembly Bill 5, designed to basically try to put Uber, Lyft and any of their gig economy competitors out of business in the state. The vote could come as soon as today. But the way they wound up wording it may end up giving the ride-sharing companies an immediate out once the inevitable challenges make it through the courts. (Insider) Uber and Lyft’s day of reckoning is here.California senators are set to vote as early as Tuesday on Assembly Bill 5, a proposed...

A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo. Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business's primary scope of operations, and be "customarily engaged"...

Democrat billionaire Tom Steyer is drawing fire after appearing at a May Day rally in East San Jose alongside a well-known labor leader, where he was labeled a “class traitor,” and embraced for it. Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Federation of Labor, highlighted the moment on X, writing: “When @TomSteyer shows up to your ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ May Day Rally in East San Jose, you ask him to wear the shirt. And he does! #ClassTraitor.” The optics of a billionaire donning anti-billionaire messaging quickly ignited criticism online, with detractors blasting both Steyer and organized labor for what they...