[bfgoodrich]

"The only possible purpose of making laws like this"...

Is for pay transparency. And in the vast, overwhelming percentage of the time, an employer knows precisely what they're planning to pay for a role, with extremely little variance. These cherry picked examples don't really mean a lot.

As to your imaginary firm not hiring in "CA, CO or WA", absolutely nothing was lost by the residents of those states.

[SavageBeast]

It's not about penalizing people residing in certain states. It's about not taking on additional regulatory burden. In a free country this is a choice we're allowed to make and we're willing to accept the trade off.

[malfist]

Ah, yes, regulatory burden. Such a boogieman.

It takes a lot of effort to type one sentence on a job posting.

If you're hiring you already know what you're willing to pay for the position. It really isn't that hard to write that down where people besides just HR can see.