Across California's tourism hotspots, local governments are effectively extorting visitors and convention-goers through aggressive hotel-specific minimum wage laws. These mandates – sold as “living wage” protections – are designed to extract higher room rates, fees, and taxes from out-of-town travelers to fund dramatic pay hikes for hotel workers. The result? Early data show clear job losses.

In the Golden State, where dreams are big and regulations even bigger, one law stands out as a nightmare for small business owners and tech giants alike: the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). Enacted in 2004 to empower workers to sue over labor violations, PAGA has morphed into a litigation machine that lines the pockets of trial lawyers and the state treasury while squeezing family-ownedn