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Occupational licensing is the biggest job killer and one of the reasons why the poor stay poor. It can cost more to become a hair dresser than an EMT all becaus

Occupational licensing is the biggest job killer and one of the reasons why the poor stay poor. It can cost more to become a hair dresser than an EMT all because of licensing and schooling. Worse many licensed jobs explicitly exclude felons which means many cannot even get a job on the outside that they would otherwise qualify for. Call the indirect tax of mega proportions. Entire industries are supported by this licensing and it really is more pervasive than you would suspect. For something closer to home go look at the issues Uber, Lyft, and such have had. All because heavily regulated industries protect businesses established but not workers.

dmix 10y ago
Nailed it, working class people are heavily affected by this. And regulation/agencies only seem to grow in scope and power rather than adapt to change or responding to the measurement of the positive/negative results of their work.
im3w1l 10y ago
Yet I have heard taxi drivers complain that uber and lyft drives down wages? It's almost as if an artificially restricted supply of workers increases wages.
jernfrost 10y ago
Obviously that depends on whether training and schooling is easily and cheaply available or not. In the US this might surely create a problem for the poor, but in e.g. Nordic countries (I am from Norway) there is usually massive economic support available for retraining, school, university etc, so this isn't really an issue. As long as getting into a school isn't a high barrier, licensing could be positive in that it keeps a certain quality in a profession. Quite to the contrary I think many problems in American society is caused by too lax standards. E.g. Prison guards and police in Norway receive years of training compared to weeks or months in the US. A lot of that is about deescalating situations, understanding mental illnesses, negotiating etc. E.g. a Norwegian prison guard is more like a social worker than a gorilla with a big stick. A lot of issues are connected and can't be solved in isolation. E.g. why are health care so expensive in the US? One factor is that many health care professionals have a high wage. Why do they have such a high wage in the US compare to many other countries? A common tradeoff is that higher risks require higher rewards. You don't buy high risk stocks with low potential for return. Nobody will risk getting into massive debt for medical school in the US without the potential for a big reward. Thus the lack of cheap/free college education in the US also helps drive up health care costs. So when it comes to poor people, licensing, education, you have to look at the whole "ecosystem".

dmix 10y ago

Nailed it, working class people are heavily affected by this. And regulation/agencies only seem to grow in scope and power rather than adapt to change or responding to the measurement of the positive/negative results of their work.

im3w1l 10y ago

Yet I have heard taxi drivers complain that uber and lyft drives down wages? It's almost as if an artificially restricted supply of workers increases wages.

jernfrost 10y ago

Obviously that depends on whether training and schooling is easily and cheaply available or not. In the US this might surely create a problem for the poor, but in e.g. Nordic countries (I am from Norway) there is usually massive economic support available for retraining, school, university etc, so this isn't really an issue. As long as getting into a school isn't a high barrier, licensing could be positive in that it keeps a certain quality in a profession. Quite to the contrary I think many problems in American society is caused by too lax standards. E.g. Prison guards and police in Norway receive years of training compared to weeks or months in the US. A lot of that is about deescalating situations, understanding mental illnesses, negotiating etc. E.g. a Norwegian prison guard is more like a social worker than a gorilla with a big stick. A lot of issues are connected and can't be solved in isolation. E.g. why are health care so expensive in the US? One factor is that many health care professionals have a high wage. Why do they have such a high wage in the US compare to many other countries? A common tradeoff is that higher risks require higher rewards. You don't buy high risk stocks with low potential for return. Nobody will risk getting into massive debt for medical school in the US without the potential for a big reward. Thus the lack of cheap/free college education in the US also helps drive up health care costs. So when it comes to poor people, licensing, education, you have to look at the whole "ecosystem".