“The proliferation of state licensing requirements is already bad enough. There’s no need for cities to pile their own mandates on.” Detroit, which requires licenses for at least 60 occupations, is among the worst offenders. [C. Jarrett Dieterle, Governing]
Also in Michigan: “Shampooing Hair And Piloting Commercial Airliners Require Same Number Of Training Hours In Michigan” [Michigan Capitol Confidential]
“The Latest On Occupational Licensing Reform: At the federal level and in the state of Michigan, there have been encouraging moves toward market liberalization.” [Thomas A. Hemphill and Jarrett Skorup, Cato Regulation mag] Related: George Leef, Regulation (reviewing “Bottleneckers” by William Mellor and Dick M. Carpenter II). “Florida Lawmakers Are Fast-Tracking Licensing Reforms” [Boehm] “But sadly Elias Zarate is no closer to being a barber, because he still doesn’t have a high school diploma. And, yes, that matters for some reason.” [same] “Inside the Insane Battle Over Arizona’s Blow-Dry Licensing Bill” [same] “Tennessee has imposed nearly $100K in fines for unlicensed hair braiding since 2009” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal] Licensing bars on applicants with criminal histories, often related hardly at all to the risks of crime in licensed occupations, make re-entry of offenders harder [Arthur Rizer and Shoshana Weissmann, The Blaze] A Twitter thread on board certification of music therapists, which are licensed in 10 states [Shoshana Weissmann et al.] Study: “optician licensing appears to be reducing consumer welfare by raising the earnings of opticians without enhancing the quality of services delivered to consumers.” [Edward J Timmons and Anna Mills, Eastern Economic Journal]
“A revenue-grab from the state’s lost decade left a trail of social costs and broken lives” [Jack McHugh, Mackinac Institute]
The city of Saginaw, Mich. has ordered businesses in a long list of categories, including bars, phone sellers, and secondhand merchants, to install video surveillance systems whose output is to be made available on demand to the police [Isis Simpson-Mersha, MLive via Scott Shackford, Reason] Earlier proposals in Detroit and Maryland called for requiring gas station owners to install surveillance video systems, but this extends the idea to many other types of business.
