I'm a successful female minority truck driver. California's AB5 forced me to leave the state I love

In layman’s terms, explain AB5.

 

Basically too many companies were treating 1099 contractors as employees, and California has decided that they need to provide employee benefits to people that fall under that category. There were a lot of workers who were making less than a living wage doing lease scams, ride sharing, and other gig type jobs. There is an ABC test to determine who falls under the category of contractor or employee.

So basically Prime, Uber, Lyft, and several other companies, want to have employees without having to shoulder the tax burden of employees. If she couldn't afford her own benefits, maybe Prime wasn't paying her enough to be truly independent. So in order to close the loophole so that scumbag companies couldn't exploit people, they also impacted some of the more legitimate companies that treated their contractors better than a minimum wage employee.

 

That is pretty much it in a nutshell.
Even without the AB 5 debacle, the cost of living,crime rate,emissions regulations(for both 4 wheelers and 18 wheelers alike),taxes,disasters (both natural and man made),are effectively forcing people to leave the Golden(shower)State and relocate to states like Texas,Arizona,Nevada and other states where people have at least a fighting chance to make a living!

 

Because 2023