Biden has right to criticize licensing rules – San Bernardino Sun

[ad_1]

President Joe Biden is correct in calling the Professional Licensing Practice for an overdue review, as he did last week. Professional licenses, ostensibly intended to protect the public, usually only protect the bottom of the line of licensed workers by crushing competition.

Overly onerous professional licensing requirements that hamper worker mobility and suppress wages also restrict competition, a White House executive order Biden read. Today, nearly 30% of jobs in the United States require a license, up from less than 5% in the 1950s.

This prevents some people from working and makes mobility between states more difficult.

To address this problem, President Biden encourages the Federal Trade Commission to ban unnecessary professional licensing restrictions that hinder economic mobility.

The full extent of this order in practice remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that the President is right to attack anti-competitive, anti-worker and anti-consumer practices in professional licensing.

Five years ago, the Californias Little Hoover Commission noted that the process [of occupational licensing] is often a political activity rather than a thoughtful consideration of how best to protect consumers.

This is true across the country, but especially here in California, which allows far more low-income occupations than the state average. The Institute for Justice noted that of 102 low-income occupations it assessed nationally, California authorized 76. In comparison, New York City authorized only 41 of the same occupations, while the Texas authorized 37 in 2017.

Likewise, in 2018, the Archbridge Institute noted that professional licenses correlated with decreased economic mobility and increased income inequality. This would be because licenses are a barrier for many workers who might want to work in particular fields, but simply cannot overcome the litany of often arbitrary requirements to obtain a license.

Professional licenses also punish low-income people twice. First, by making it more difficult for low-income people to access a job, then by increasing the cost of services.

California, it should be noted, has always been hostile to licensing reform. In 2018, former Sen. Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, attempted to exempt people who shampoo and hair from licensing. He was killed in committee by a 14-3 vote.

Likewise, a number of efforts by Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, to exempt certain lines of work from licensing requirements or to promote portability so that workers licensed in other states can work in California (and vice versa) were killed by Sacramento.

For a state that prides itself on being innovative and progressive, California is remarkably archaic and regressive, all for state power and political submission to vested interests.

We hope that now that Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama have highlighted professional licensing as an issue, perhaps changes are on the horizon. The answer is clear: if a license is really needed in a profession, keep it; if not, delete it. Period.

[ad_2]