I believe the new electricity pricing scheme is a ploy to force people who don't make enough money to b required to file a tax return to have to file a tax return in order to get the lowest electricity rates: https://gwsandiego.net/blog/?p=1867.

But your point about pushing people to stop working is valid. The State of California has been aggressively trying to force business to shut down or leave the state with a series of aggressive and expensive measures that make operation not viable. You know that California has high taxes, but the taxes is just the tip of the iceberg.

For example, California's tax laws do not line up with federal tax laws, so CA companies have to keep two sets of books, one for the feds and one for the state. Year in and year out, the CPA societies beg the state to bring CA in line with the feds, and CA won't do it.

A specific example of how CA has been aggressively eliminating jobs: it used to be that a person could work remotely from California for a company that does not do business in California with no tax penalty to the employer. But a couple of years ago, they changed the rules so that if someone is working remotely from California, the business is considered to be a California operation and the business has to pay California income taxes + their own state's income taxes. Lots of people in CA lost their jobs as a result of this law change.