That works in many cases, but then some companies started gaming the system by contracting out the work to lots of small shops that fell below the floor. That forced a partial abandonment of the floor system.

Careful here. Your phraseology indicates that you think that the companies were being disengenuous, that they COULD have paid the cost of the regulation, but just found a way around it. My position is that in most cases, they looked at their books at realized that if they didn’t “game” the system, they’d be out of business.

The ugly little problem here is the metric we use to measure the size of a business.

Oh, it’s even worse than that. Mandate that come from Washington cannot take into account localized issues. A regulation that a small company in low-cost, nonunion Harlingen Texas can live with might be death to the same business in high cost unionized San Francisco.

When governments try to do impossible things, nobody wins.

Again, good discussion.

Pax.