Thursday, March 27, 2014

Oregon Really Good at Making Life Hard for Low-Income Workers

Veronique de Rugy reports that states require big license fees and lots of education/experience for workers to perform low-income jobs like:
preschool teacher
athletic trainer
cosmetologist
barber
school bus driver
truck driver
manicurist
Not that a good barber or manicurist is not a wonder to behold, but why these rules for people who make little money and can do little real harm?

Oregon public officials think this is a big problem. Oregon rates third among the worst states for making life hard for low-income workers by imposing hoops to jump through before you can earn any money at it. Of course there are no licensing fees or educational requirements for being a legislator or elected official--both of whom can do (and have done) tons of damage. Go figure.

Institute for Justice: License to Work (http://ij.org/licensetowork)

2 comments:

MAX Redline said...

Ive seen a few horror stories, particularly regarding barbers and cosmetologists. Very odd. I mean, if you get a bad haircut, you go to a different barber (or just shave your head).

T. D. said...

Heh. My father has always repeated the old adage: The difference between a bad haircut and a good one is two weeks. A good manicure and a bad one probably has a similar time frame.

Any teenager can be a babysitter, but if you're going to do daycare or preschool, you've suddenly stepped over into the twilight zone of massive responsibility and horrifying consequences for not enough education and experience.

http://www.daycare.com/oregon/state12.html

Hey guys, moms without special training have been doing preschool for centuries.