California Democrats Kill Licensing Reform: New at Reason

Democrats in California don’t care about the working poor so much as they care about control.

Steven Greenhut writes:

California Democrats prattle endlessly about helping the working poor, but their latest vote against a bill that would tangibly help financially struggling people shows that Democratic leaders are more interested in serving their real constituencies: state bureaucracies, unions and other interest groups that want to keep out the competition.

The latest example involves occupational-licensing reform. It’s one of those rare issues that should have widespread bipartisan support. Think tanks on the left and right agree that burdensome and costly rules for getting a license to perform certain jobs (barbers, makeup artists, locksmiths, speech pathologists, funeral directors, etc.) make it inordinately difficult to enter the job market, especially for people of modest means.

The stated purpose of the rules, which often require hundreds of hours of training and thousands of dollars in coursework, is to promote public health and safety. But the rules often have little relevance to the job at hand, and they typically are promoted by unions and trade associations (and the politicians they support), who want to use the political system to increase prices and profits artificially. There’s no evidence such barriers enhance safety.

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