Townhall...
Cruel
Laws
By Walter E. Williams
8/3/2011
What
does it take to be able to own
and operate a taxi and earn $30,000, $40,000 or more a year? You need
to
purchase a used car and liability insurance. Compared with other
businesses,
the startup cost to become a taxi owner/operator is modest; that’s
until you
have to come up with money for a license. In May 2010, the price of a
license,
called a medallion, to own one taxi in New York City sold for $603,000.
As
referenced in my recent book, “Race and Economics,” New York City is
not alone.
In Chicago, a taxi license costs $56,000, Boston $285,000 and
Philadelphia
$75,000. It’s not rocket science to understand the effect of laws that
produce
these prices: They discriminate against anyone getting into the taxi
business
who lacks tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars or bank credit to
be able
to get a loan.
Suppose
you’re a trucker with an
interstate license to ship goods but you want to expand to shipping
goods
within your state. Is it fair for the government to permit your
competition to
show up at your hearing, with their attorneys, to protest that your
services
are not needed and therefore you are denied what’s called a
“certificate of
necessity,” which would allow you to ship goods within the state?
Attorney
Timothy Sandefur discusses this despicable process in his recent
article “CON
Job,” published by the Cato Institute (summer 2011). “Certificate of
necessity”
monopolistic restrictions exist across the country, governing a variety
of
industries, from moving companies and taxicabs to hospitals and car
lots. The
intention and the effect of these laws is to protect incumbent
practitioners
from open market competition, enabling them to charge higher prices as
a means
to higher income.
Interior
designing has almost no
startup costs. Not so if you want to practice in Florida. State law
mandates
that anyone who wants to practice interior designing have six years of
education and experience, including graduating from a state-approved
interior
design program and completing an apprenticeship under a state-licensed
interior
designer. Then the applicant must pass a state-mandated licensing exam.
The
sole purpose of the law is to keep the outs out so the ins can charge
monopoly
prices.
If
interior designing is not for you,
how about being a tour guide in Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.?
Neither city
will permit you to be a tour guide without a government-issued license.
In
Phoenix, you could earn a living
doing something as simple as shaping eyebrows, a safe and common
practice known
as “eyebrow threading.” To do so legally, the Phoenix government
requires you
to take hundreds of hours of irrelevant training and spend thousands of
dollars
on classes. None of those classes actually teaches you how to practice
eyebrow
threading.
One
would think that civil rights
organizations, leftists and progressives would be fighting the battle
for
people’s rights to earn a living. The fact of business is that they are
often
on the other side, and it’s the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for
Justice
that has been waging war against entrenched incumbents who use
government to
protect them from competition. In fact, the Institute for Justice has
current
court battles against restrictions on tour guides, eyebrow threading
and
interior designing, as well as several more found at its website
(http://ij.org/economicliberty). The Institute for Justice has had
remarkable
success in lawsuits, breaking many economic barriers, such as those
against
hair braiding in Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and California
and taxi
restrictions in Denver, Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
Arbitrary
licensing and permitting
laws foreclose many occupations that are ideally suited to people of
modest
means, particularly minorities. Here’s my bet: Ask any liberal
politician, from
the president and the Congressional Black Caucus to civil rights
organizations
and black local politicians, whether he’d take up the fight to
eliminate these
barriers to upward mobility. You’ll get answers, but they won’t be a
simple
yes. The reason is the ins contribute to their political campaigns and
the outs
don’t.
Read
it at Townhall
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