Morning Wire - Mass Layoffs & California Regulations | 4.29.23

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Corporations continue with mass layoffs California’s regulatory policies cause businesses and people to leave the state, and a rally in Austin, Texas is set to bring attention to the border crisis.  Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Birch Gold: No-Cost, No-Obligation FREE Information Kit Text “WIRE"" to 989898 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mass layoffs at Tech Giants, Meta, Amazon, and Lyft spread to Disney, Walmart, and beyond. What's forcing the firings and what industries are on high alert? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's April 29th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. California, once the fastest-growing state in the nation, is now seeing its population decline. Are heavy-handed regulations part of the problem? Businesses are leaving. They're seeking areas where taxes are lower, housing prices are lower, and business regulation is less prohibitive.

And pressure grows in Texas for the government to take more aggressive action on the crisis at the southern border. The goal is to put pressure on the politicians so that you move the Overton window of what's possible. We discuss a rally taking place in the state's capital today. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news, You need to know. Disney is laying off thousands of employees this week, a move that comes as Bed, Bath, and Beyond announced its filing for bankruptcy, and ride-sharing giant Lyft is cutting 25% of its workforce.

Here with more on what's driving the trend and what it means for the nation's labor market is Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips. Caput seems like every week we're seeing a headline like this. What's going on? Well, it seems that way because that is what's happening. After taking over last week, new Lyft CEO, David Risher, announced the company would be laying off 1,200 of its roughly 4,000 employees. The move is reportedly part of an effort to cut costs so they can lower fare prices and better compete with their main rival, Uber. As Ristler put it in an

email to staff, quote, we need to bring our costs down to deliver affordable rides, compelling earnings for drivers, and profitable growth. That move comes a year after the company fired 700 more employees in a similar attempt to cut costs after their ridership numbers failed to hit pre-pendemic levels and their stock price was cut in half earlier last year. But like, you said, this is hardly the first batch of mass layoffs that we've seen. Yeah, tell us more about that growing trend. So last month, Facebook parent company Meta made waves after announcing they'd soon lay off 10,000 jobs in a second round of mass layoffs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the move was part of an effort to usher in a, quote, year of efficiency. He cited higher interest rates and higher

costs brought on by new government regulations as a reason for the decision. And then on Monday, Disney began massive layoffs of their own, cutting thousands of jobs from their parks and entertainment division, as well as ESPN. That move comes up to thousands more employees were fired last month. Perhaps most drastically, last week the media company BuzzFeed announced they'd be laying off 15% of their staff and shutting down BuzzFeed news entirely. And then Walmart, the nation's largest employer laid off 2,000 employees earlier this month. But while we've started to see mass layoffs in a number of industries, it's been the tech industry that's been hit hardest. According to layoffs.fyi, which tracks hiring and firing trends, 597 corporates,

have implemented some form of mass layoff in 2023 alone. That's a big number. Why have tech companies borne the brunt of these mass layoffs? Well, for over a decade, tech companies appeared almost impervious to outside economic factors. They grew at astonishing rates, and really their biggest concerns were often finding enough new workers to help keep pace with their growth. But over the last two years, the tech sector has been leading the way not in growth, but in

layoffs. A big factor on that front was COVID. During the pandemic, demand for tech products went through the road. roof as everything from work to shopping to entertainment went online. And to meet that demand, tech companies rushed to hire at a frenetic pace. But as lockdowns came to a close, demand for tech products began to dip, and those same companies were stuck with bloated payrolls and diminished profits. Beyond tech, the financial industry has also been hit hard by mass layoffs. What's happening there? So as markets have struggled over the last few years, a number of mainstay financial firms have

followed suit. Accenture recently cut 19,000 jobs. Goldman Sachs announced plans to cut 3,200 workers. McKinsey is cutting 2,000 more. Again, the list goes on. But it's worth noting, while a number of large corporations have implemented mass layoffs throughout the last year, the broader labor market has actually shown signs of resiliency, remaining surprisingly strong. Overall unemployment still sits at 3.5%, which is near 50-year lows,

and there are just under 10 million job openings across the U.S. But now the question becomes if these mass layoffs will soon spread to every industry, or if they're an anomaly reserved for companies that saw rapid growth when the economy was in a stronger spot. Let's hope for the latter. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Any time. That's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. California was once the fastest growing state in the nation.

Now for the first time in its history, it's losing population. Since 2020, about a million more people have moved out of the state than have moved into it. Here to discuss the reason for the exodus is Judge Glock, the director of research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge, thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me back. Now, you recently wrote an article about California's regulations in City Journal titled The Regulatory Labyrinth. And in that article, you argued that regulations were a major contributor to California's population decline.

How much more regulated is California than other states? By almost any measure, California has many more regulations than any other state in the union. Different groups that evaluate state regulations from the Mercatus Center to Cato, Cato Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, they all rank California's the state with the most in the most damaging regulations. These cover everything from mandating how much water your bathroom sink is allowed every minute.

It's 1.2 gallons in case you're curious, to requiring toy stores to have what they call gender-neutral toy aisles. Now, I've heard about regulations requiring restaurant kitchens in California to have some very particular doors and layouts, that kind of thing. Are regulations primarily a concern

for businesses? It's definitely a problem for everybody in the state and one of the biggest ways that regulations are hurting average citizens is by increasing the cost of housing. So let's say you want to build a house in California. Besides the usual electrical and building codes, you also need to meet precise state requirements for your mandated electrical car charging spot and the mandated solar panels in your roof. If you're landscaping your new yard, you will need to submit what's called the landscape documentation package, and then you're only allowed to use some types of plants on parts of your property. In some places, you'll need to submit special reports by archaeologists, paleontologists, and even biologists, to show that you're not disturbing anything old.

All this could add hundreds of thousands of dollars to cost of a home and mountains of paperwork, and a lot of residents simply realize they can buy a nicer home for half the price without all these regulations in neighboring states. Now, what about the business environment? What are some of the regulations that California might consider amending if they'd like to retain citizens? Well, one of the ways that California makes its kind of mountain of regulation so much more burdensome is that they allow basically anybody to sue if a local business doesn't abide by them. For instance, the state provides special awards or people who sue a business for not complying with disability regulations, say not having a ramp for your restaurant or a special device

for your motel pool. One serial plaintiff filed over 100 lawsuits in a year. mainly against small restaurants in Chinatown. A local restaurant owner called it a shakedown for small mom-and-pop businesses. But one of my favorite or maybe least favorite regulations in California is what's called Prop 65. This required businesses to post warnings about having certain chemicals in their products or on their property. If you've been to the state, you might have noticed these everywhere. But if a business forgets to put the label up, lawyers can sue and collect big rewards. According to one estimate, there have been over $300 million in Prop 64.

settlements over the past two decades. And businesses are so scared of these lawsuits that I found one example of business attaching Prop 65 warnings to the trees it had for sale. Wow. Where do these regulations come from? What's the incentive to impose so many? Yeah, one reason is that regulations allow politicians to extract more funds from businesses. Basically, the more regulations politicians impose, the more businesses need politicians

help to get around them, and the more they donate to those politicians. Now, California's very proud of all its supposedly strict campaign finance rules. There's an interesting exception of those. It's called bequest where politicians can ask businesses to donate to, quote-unquote, charities. So Governor Gavin Newsom has made bequest to businesses to donate to his wife's charities, which have then paid her more than $2.3 million in salary over the past decade. Those businesses donating include many regulated by the state, like Comcast, AT&T, and even the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank.

Former Mayor Eric Garcetti created a charity called the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles, which raised six-figure donations from government-regulated companies like Snap and a local utility company. How do all these costs and regulations affect the business environment of the state in general? Well, they definitely make it a lot harder to operate. According to one estimate, from 2018 to 2021, 352 different company headquarters moved out of the state, including some massive ones like Oracle and Tesla. Yet the state continues passing more and more rules,

and so more and more people and jobs and businesses keep leaving. All right. Well, Judge, thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks again for having me. That was Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. The ongoing humanitarian crisis at the southern border is prompting demands for more aggressive government action from a growing number of Americans, including a group gathering today in Austin, Texas. Joining us to discuss the rally is one of its organizers, Mark Meckler,

president of Citizens for Self-Governance and Convention of States Action. Hi, Mark. First, tell us about this rally, the how many more rally, what's it seeking to accomplish. Well, the rally is intended to draw attention to what's actually going on at our southern border. People always talk about an immigration crisis or illegal immigration. That's not really correct. What we have is the largest humanitarian crisis, frankly, that we've seen in the modern history of the United States. We have sexual slavery at a scale unimaginable in the United States.

We have carnage on the ranches. The photos I've seen the documentary evidence I've seen is incredible. We have one person dying of fentanyl poisoning in the United States of America every seven minutes. Over 70,000 in the last year that's more Americans than died in the entire Vietnam War. And it goes on and on. Our hospitals are overrun. Our schools are overrun. our law enforcement's overrun.

This is just a humanitarian crisis. So the goal of the how many more rally is to draw attention to the crisis and put pressure on the Texas legislature and the Texas governor to actually do something about it. So you think this movement can begin with Texas. What kinds of actions can Texas take?

Yeah, you know, it's important that we talk about it in the right legal context. Often people talk about immigration. It's not really an immigration issue in the United States versus Arizona, Supreme Court decided that the states can't enforce immigration law. This is about Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which gives the states the power to repel invasion.

Texas has a concurrent clause in their constitution. There's definitely an invasion taking place on our southern border. So there's multiple things the state can do. They can build physical barriers. They can build their own wall. The state can and is working now on a bill called HB20, House Bill 20. That provides for a Texas border protection unit. That's a specific law enforcement unit with the function of repelling the invasion.

They can make stifferable penalties for things like criminal trespass. So there's a whole package of things that the governor and the state legislature can do and take serious action and actually repel the invasion in Texas. And what action has Governor Greg Abbott and Texas lawmakers already taken so far? Well, the governor at least verbally declared an invasion, and I thought that was a good first step. He has Operation Lone Star going on, which has put more resources on the border. But if you go down there, if you talk to the people who are down there every day, what you see is Operation Lone Star is like a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound. It's really not enough to make a difference on the border.

So the goal is give them the room, give them the political cover, the backing of the people to actually get in there and do the serious heavy lifting that's required. We have major public figures coming. Ted Nugent is opening the rally. Laura Logan, who's one of the best reporters down on the border, Jason Jones, Mark Morgan, former Border Patrol Commissioner. So a lot of folks, serious folks, so we're bringing serious heft to this, to give us the best chance of having the legislature and the governor take appropriate action. Final question. Title 42 is expected to end on May 11th. What will take place, do you think, when that occurs?

I think what we're going to see is a surge of illegal immigrants to and across the border. Title 42 gave the government a reason to repel a whole bunch of. people, 2.5 million people denied entry because of Title 42 being in place. So what you can just imagine is a surge of 2.5 million people who couldn't otherwise get in are not going to make return trips to the border and try and get into the country. So that makes this issue more pressing than ever. And I think it's really important that we look at this in real human terms and ask ourselves this question, how many more young girls are we going to allow to be sold into sexual slavery? How many more families have to lose brothers and daughters and fathers and sisters?

to the scourge of fentanyl. How many people have to die along the border on the ranchers' properties? We've got to ask ourselves that question as individuals. If people are interested in participating, they can go to How Manymore.com to get information about how to join us at the rally. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining us. That was Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States and organizer of the How Many More rally. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with an extra addition of Morning Wire.