Posted on 02/04/2015 6:55:05 AM PST by MichCapCon
An important if usually under-the-radar public policy issue is occupational licensing – state rules that require residents to meet various criteria (and pay for them) before they may earn a living in a particular profession.
Rolling back licensure mandates requires taking on groups with a vested interest in preserving these restrictions on opportunity (and potential competitors). To its credit the previous Legislature did do some good if still-modest work in this area. In a bipartisan manner, legislators eliminated rules having to do with dieticians and nutritionists, interior designers, auctioneers, community planners, carnival workers, ocularists, school solicitors and immigration clerical assistants. It also tweaked some licensing requirements for barbers.
The Legislature also explored reforming licensure mandates on landscape architects, polygraph examiners, foresters (vetoed by Gov. Rick Snyder), residential lift installers and nurses, but these changes did not come to fruition. Many of these suggested reforms were based on a 2012 report from a state Office of Regulatory Reinvention.
For most jobs that require licenses, the mandates do not benefit the public in any measurable way. That is, there is no systematic evidence that licensure in most occupations adds to public health or safety, whether in the jobs mentioned above or in many other areas of employment, such as painting or construction.
Recognizing this, in 2013 a bill was introduced in the House to prohibit licensure mandates that cannot be shown to increase public health and safety. The Legislature should reconsider the issue this session as it would allow people to work legally, and let government get back to focusing on its core functions.
Elected officials should be licensed and when they violate the licensing agency, the Constitution, they should be jailed.
I am a registered professional engineer (3 states) and have been since the 1970's. I often end up verifying that the work of licensed electricians on construction projects meets the designs I have rendered. I am a member of some electrical code committees and have served on an advisory board to the State's Chief electrical inspector.
Bad electrical design and bad electrical construction can and has electrocuted people and caused buildings to burn down. Similarly, structural engineers need to have the skill to keep buildings and bridges from falling down. I like the idea that doctors actually know something and have passed a minimum threshold of training.
Do all professions that are regulated, i.e. have occupational licenses, need to be licensed? No. But some really do involve public health and safety. Some (like engineers) involve the safety of people who have no contact with the licensed professionals services other than using the facilities that they have designed.
I view occupational licensing as an appropriate function of government that has been extended too far to regulate and restrict the market in areas where regulation doesn't belong.
Does it have to be the Government doing the licensing? Why not independent professional boards?
Just as the organizations who write the standards followed by engineers and others (ie ASTM) are independent private organizations.
I suggest that you read Milton Friedman's extensive works on the evil of government licensing.
He brilliantly discusses how market based solutions would address, in a superior manner, ALL of your concerns.
In no way should government be involved in any licensing -- it only distorts (or destroys) freedom based market solutions.
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