It's about time...

Senate to hold hearing on occupational licensing scams

by Personal Liberty News Desk

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing next week to determine just how many entrepreneurs and jobseekers are forced out of the economy by increasingly burdensome occupational licensing requirements.

The bipartisan investigation, led by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), will focus primarily on whether state licensing boards controlled by members of the professions they police actively work to stifle competition.

“The rapid growth of state licensing boards that are controlled by members of the profession they regulate has become a major threat to equal opportunity in this country,” Lee said in a statement.

Among small business owners, licensing boards have been cited as one of the biggest entrepreneurial headaches in recent years.

In fact, 2014 Kauffman Foundation/Thumbtack.com Small Business Friendliness Survey found that a majority of the American small business owners polled for the survey cited professional licensing requirements as the most important regulatory issue in determining a region’s friendliness toward entrepreneurs.

“Licensing regulations were overwhelmingly the biggest headache for the small service businesses that we surveyed,” Jon Lieber, Chief Economist of Thumbtack.com, told Personal Liberty® at the time. “The time-cost and complexity involved with complying with multiple licenses in multiple jurisdictions were the single largest regulatory factor that affected perceptions of overall friendliness of a city or State.”

This is unsurprising, considering the 2012 report from the Institute for Justice which made this shocking observation about the arbitrary nature of some licensing regulations: “States consider an average of 33 days of training and two exams enough preparation for EMTs, but demand 10 times the training–372 days, on average–for cosmetologists.”

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/senate-to-hold-hearing-on-occupational-licensing-scams/