Pretty good report on the cost of licensing and how it affects jobs across states. IMO it makes it pretty clear that most of these licenses probably shouldn't exist and are nothing more than either a cash grab for local and/or state governments or a barrier to entry to protect existing companies from competition.

https://www.ij.org/license-to-work-release-5-8-12

5/10/2012 2:24:30 PM

why go to a doctor when joe-blow can perform surgery for half the cost?

5/10/2012 2:25:50 PM

Business licenses started the Arab Spring revolutions. Some poor schmuck couldn't afford the bribe/license for his lemonade cart and decided to self-immolate.

The right to go out and feed yourself is the type of thing men will kill for. It should be regulated with great caution.

[Edited on May 10, 2012 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2012 2:30:49 PM

Quote :

"why go to a doctor hairdresser when joe-blow can perform surgery do your vein fucking hair stuff for half the cost?"

But congratulations on not reading the article and looking like a tool.

5/10/2012 2:37:07 PM

Yup, couldn't even be bothered to watch the first 30 seconds of the video on the page. Well done.

Exactly, smc. The dream of starting your own business, being your own boss, etc. can be incredibly difficult to attain with little to no reason in many cases.

If you want a really interesting case study just look at moving companies or the battles over taxi companies and livery services. A lot of licensing is just blatant anti-competetive protectionism. It's hard to imagine anything much more fundamentally un-American.

5/10/2012 2:41:29 PM

I concur with the OP.

5/10/2012 2:58:54 PM

Quote :

" VEIN FUCKING HAIR"

5/10/2012 3:19:42 PM

of course I couldn't be bothered to read the article. This conversation has been had a million times over, and people always take the extreme position on either end: A) Eliminate govt. intervention and let the market sort it out! or B) You have to have govt. interference to ensure fairness.

These threads always devolve into an ideological pissing contest without ever examining the value of balance. Instead of trying to come to agreement on where to draw the line, the conversation always becomes dominated on whether that line should even exist.



*jerk off motion*

5/10/2012 3:39:26 PM

Quote :

"B) You have to have govt. interference to ensure fairness."

Is an extreme position?

5/10/2012 3:46:14 PM

on this board. yes...which is just further proof of our cultural shift from the center to the right in this country.

5/10/2012 3:47:10 PM

Quote :

"of course I couldn't be bothered to read the article. This conversation has been had a million times over, and people always take the extreme position on either end: A) Eliminate govt. intervention and let the market sort it out! or B) You have to have govt. interference to ensure fairness. These threads always devolve into an ideological pissing contest without ever examining the value of balance. Instead of trying to come to agreement on where to draw the line, the conversation always becomes dominated on whether that line should even exist."

Let me return to something you said

Quote :

"why go to a doctor when joe-blow can perform surgery for half the cost?"

I do believe that the OPs reference specifically points to doctors as a qualification that they don't intend to argue to do away with.

*checks video*

It's even worse than that! This guy argues that 77 occupations (including landscapers) have HEAVIER burdens than motherfucking EMTs.

look, this dude is making the point that you should please please agree with that

EMT > hair braider

You obviously don't disagree with this, so what is the video's real core point. It's government run amok. Our founding fathers were practically screaming at us through their their quill pins that government is prone to excess and must have our constant attention in order to prevent it from going tyrannical. As far as I can tell, they were pretty fucking right about that.

Quote :

"on this board. yes...which is just further proof of our cultural shift from the center to the right in this country."

Out of the two I'm definitely progressive.

5/10/2012 4:09:15 PM

So what is it about landscaper regulation that's screwing up America?

Do landscapers even need to be licensed in North Carolina? Wouldn't the founding fathers have been fine with NC doing whatever the fuck they want regarding requiring X profession to be regulated?

5/10/2012 4:14:14 PM

Try starting your own business, following all legal and regulatory procedures...

You'll shortly realize why it needs to be changed. It's ridiculous how much regulation can jack up the cost of starting up.

5/10/2012 5:24:10 PM

I doubt the founders would have been fine with NC doing whatever the fuck they wanted regarding professional licensing standards. The founders had idealogical disagreements, but almost without exception they were strongly against government limiting the freedom of citizens to go about normal life without a damn good reason. In the case of most founders they would have been more ok with a state law than a national one, so yeah, I guess you're right on that count.

The point is that these laws, in large part, serve no real purpose aside from limiting the freedom of citizens to work. They create artificial barriers to entry, they limit free enterprise, and they do very little to protect the public (which is almost always what they purport to do). They are bad laws. In a struggling economy which desperately needs small business to succeed they are crippling startup ventures which might otherwise create badly needed jobs.

5/10/2012 5:30:01 PM

Entrepreneurship solves social problems just as it grows the economy.

I don't feel like we really have the ability to "encourage" entrepreneurship as much as stop discouraging it. I still think government can and should still go after the robber barons, and address inequality through things like an income tax, at least for the high tiers of income. But our problem is that people itching to change the world... can hardly move their legs for all the patents, codes, licenses, and god knows what else.

5/10/2012 5:55:09 PM

Quote :

"Try starting your own business, following all legal and regulatory procedures... You'll shortly realize why it needs to be changed. It's ridiculous how much regulation can jack up the cost of starting up. "

It's pretty easy to start your own business actually

It only becomes problematic when you start hiring more than a few employees (I want to say above 5 but Id have to check). But this is mostly to protect the worker.

5/10/2012 8:00:02 PM

Quote :

"So what is it about landscaper regulation that's screwing up America? "

The problem is that the government should only be stepping in when necessary. There doesn't have to be a huge problem to mean things should change. It's about the principle. Hair shampooers shouldn't have to pay the government to get a job. Cosmetology shouldn't require more government mandated training than being an EMT. The attitude of "it doesn't affect me" is dangerous and stupid. The point is, is that the government is placing unnecessary restrictions, regulations, and fees on jobs. Should a doctor or engineer be subject to licensing, testing, etc.? Yes, because the safety of the public is paramount to these positions and directly affected by them.

And in such a crappy economy, there shouldn't be unnecessary barriers to employment.

[Edited on May 10, 2012 at 8:56 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2012 8:54:16 PM

Sorry, I refuse to watch a video so ridiculous.

5/10/2012 10:39:14 PM

I do see the argument that some of these licensing requirements serve little purpose beyond establishing a sort of public cartel system in certain fields by serving as unesccessary barriers to entry for new competitors to the market. Proponents of these licensing requirements - existing players in a particular market for example - advocate for them as nescessary for either safety and or quality of service and suggest that maintaining those standards is a sufficiently compelling public interest.

When the arguments in terms of safety are honest and placed in proper perspective then they can make compelling arguments for licensing requirements. Doctors, EMTs, electricians, and other occupations whose competence (or lack of) can directly impact the health and safety of the individuals they serve and sometimes more beyond them do seem like reasonable candidates for license requirements.

As some have noted however, the strictness of license requirements sometimes appears to have a stronger inverse relationship with the excess demand for the service than it has a correlation to the actual compelling need to provide reasonable assurances of safety. In those cases - for example if it were true that it was more costly and difficult to become licensed as a hair-dresser than an EMT - I would suspect the primary purpose of the licensing is to protect the existing professionals from an influx of new competitors depressing the value of their labor. I... find that to be less than ideal.

These sorts of professional licensing systems have tended to remind me quite a bit of the medieval trade guilds. They justify themselves to the consumers of their craft or service by arguing they maintain an assurance of a level of quality and service and justify themselves to their members by arguing that they allow them to keep their prices at more comfortable levels. This sounds like a win-win except that in both cases the hegemony of the system is not established or maintained on its merits alone; the trade guilds enforced their dominance by club, torch and intimidation and the professional certification regimes are maintined by force of law. Where the compelling public interest is real, the modern system is night and day compared to the medeival system. Where the primary motivation is to serve as a barrier to entry into the market, it's a much much kinder softer version of the medeival trade guilds' cartels - a public cartel vs a private cartel.

So yeah I would be willing to consider rolling back some of the licensing which protects these public cartels if done judiciously and gradually (no point suddenly depressing the wages in a speciality at the cost of livelihoods when you could reduce the pain of correcting a market by doing it over time.) Transitioning those to non-governmental professional organizations might be better than over-night gutting. I would also be interested in examining some of the real and needed safety related licensing and consider whether an underserved demand for those experts had been responded to by loosening of licensing requirements where they may be other ways of stimulating growth of that talent pool besides cutting safety requirements.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 12:06 AM. Reason : as]

5/11/2012 12:05:16 AM

Quote :

"spöokyjon ? 17836 Posts user info edit post Sorry, I refuse to watch a video so ridiculous."

If you watched the video you wouldn't feel that way. I dare you to prove me wrong.

5/11/2012 8:49:08 AM

Hair dresser safety training:

1) don't run with scissors
2) don't cut off ears

5/11/2012 8:53:24 AM

^^ To clarify, I don't necessarily disagree with its position, but it's a ridiculously shitty video. I did watch the first two minutes of it. It felt like watching a late night infomercial.

5/11/2012 8:55:32 AM

Quote :

" Should a doctor or engineer be subject to licensing, testing, etc.? Yes, because the safety of the public is paramount to these positions and directly affected by them. "

And haircutters or landscapers don't affect public safety in any way? If haircutters don't properly santize their equipment or clean their shops, or don't refuse to stop the spread of lice? If landscapers don't take caution in the storage and use of dangerous chemicals or equipment.

I'm just saying that not every profession that isn't bomb technician is completely free of public safety concerns. Also, all professions should be regulated to provide safe workplaces and fair treatment and compensation for their workers.

5/11/2012 8:57:45 AM

Quote :

"Wouldn't the founding fathers have been fine with NC doing whatever the fuck they want regarding requiring X profession to be regulated?"

The founders were decidedly against guilds, so they would have been against the modern version, occupational licensing.

But history goes in long cycles. In a hundred years people will look back as us as if we were mad to suffer the existence of such organizations.

5/11/2012 9:11:04 AM

Ah and the NC landscaping license exempts landscapers who perform less than $2500 in work per customer per year. So it's not about your gardener or the guy who cuts your grass (grass cutting is also exempted and doesn't count towards the exemption limit) but more towards people who would be doing jobs that involved more sizeable crews or actually changing drainage patterns I guess.

5/11/2012 9:15:34 AM

Quote :

"In those cases - for example if it were true that it was more costly and difficult to become licensed as a hair-dresser than an EMT - I would suspect the primary purpose of the licensing is to protect the existing professionals from an influx of new competitors depressing the value of their labor. I... find that to be less than ideal."

What about the type of people that are attracted to each profession? I'm biased as hell because my MIL is a "hair dresser" and my wife worked a few years in the beauty supply/education industry but I will say that you cannot ignore the people that are attracted to either profession (cosmetologist vs emt). How do you know the average aspiring cosmetologist doesn't require more training than the average aspiring emt? Also, just because you only get your hair cut doesn't mean that is all the person is licensed to do. The license allows them to do other things (chemical color, waxing or other hair removal, pedicures) that IMO should require a good deal of training/continuing education. Although, like I said I'm biased because I have heard so many horror stories from the cosmetologist side compared to the the ems side.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 9:27 AM. Reason : ]

5/11/2012 9:21:16 AM

^^ Yes, but if licensing were a solution to these problems wouldn't you see more consistency in the requirements or at least whether or not a license is required for a given job? Most of these professions did not even require a license in half the states.

Licensing itself doesn't do anything to create a safe environment or ensure quality. I have no problem with things like health inspections to ensure public safety, but having somebody fill out a form and pay $200 doesn't make their operation any safer.

5/11/2012 9:21:16 AM

Quote :

"The founders were decidedly against guilds, so they would have been against the modern version, occupational licensing. But history goes in long cycles. In a hundred years people will look back as us as if we were mad to suffer the existence of such organizations."

The founders never had to deal with heavy equipment, mass quantities of fertlizer, the distribution of clean water to millions of people, etc.

By your logic we'd be going back to covered wagons by now.

5/11/2012 9:21:33 AM

Quote :

"Licensing itself doesn't do anything to create a safe environment or ensure quality. I have no problem with things like health inspections to ensure public safety, but having somebody fill out a form and pay $200 doesn't make their operation any safer."

No but it prevents those who aren't serious about following the standard procedure from starting in the first place.

Door locks don't really keep thieves out either.

5/11/2012 9:23:37 AM

^POLL TAX

Quote :

"Landscaping License"

The End is Near

5/11/2012 9:51:39 AM

What in the fuck does operating a crane or dangerous chemicals have to do with the right to vote?

Quote :

"The End is Near"

paranoids have been saying this or thousands of years.

5/11/2012 9:53:39 AM

Quote :

"And haircutters or landscapers don't affect public safety in any way? If haircutters don't properly santize their equipment or clean their shops, or don't refuse to stop the spread of lice? If landscapers don't take caution in the storage and use of dangerous chemicals or equipment. I'm just saying that not every profession that isn't bomb technician is completely free of public safety concerns. Also, all professions should be regulated to provide safe workplaces and fair treatment and compensation for their workers."

By this logic, most professions would require licensing. The fact the licensing requirements for these types of jobs are very inconsistent and non-existent in several states is a clue that they're either not needed or need reform. I guess all restaurant employees should be licensed too, since they can directly impact public safety in a major way. Same thing with sign-men on road construction jobs, since twirling that sign can impact safety.

5/11/2012 9:54:19 AM

Yeah, that's what I said. Every single employee in these companies need to be licensed.

5/11/2012 9:57:20 AM

Quote :

" How do you know the average aspiring cosmetologist doesn't require more training than the average aspiring emt? Also, just because you only get your hair cut doesn't mean that the license allows them to do other things (chemical color, waxing or other hair removal, pedicures) that IMO should require a good deal of training/continuing education. "

Public health concerns around cosmetology are something I am less ambivalent about requiring inspection and or licensing for. I do think though that the skill and quality of service aspects of cosmetology could be handled by a voluntary professional association in the form of a non-profit organization; such an organization would be beneficial for cosmetologists compared to the current system because moving from New Jerysey to Delaware would not nescessarily involve relicencing nor would a cosmetologist have to worry about 50 different certification regimes.

I understand the desire to maintain a level of standards in one's profession. All I'm saying is I'm not certain the quality standards are something that needs 50 different state required boards when an independent non-profit professional organization might suffice for those aspects not related to public health. I will not dispute that some procedures require a significant ammount of training and as long as a reputable professional association could certify that competency I do not believe salons that planned on staying in business would be likely to risk hiring someone who didn't have propper credentials (just as you'd be hard pressed to find a modern engineering firm hire a mechanical engineer who didn't have an appropriate degree even in states that exempted industry from engineer certification requirements.) Don't get me wrong though, I have no idea how you'd realistically transition from what we have now to a more flexible and adaptable voluntary professional association.

Quote :

"Although, like I said I'm biased because I have heard so many horror stories from the cosmetologist side compared to the the ems side."

I did not intend to trivialize the skill and training that goes into becoming a professional cosmetologist, however I do not think I am out of line to suggest that there is a clearer public good served in a thorough licensing and certification process for EMTs. For me the difference is that the general skill, education, and quality of service provided by an EMT could be expected to correlate to things like survival rates of accident or crime victims as well as people suffering life-threatening accute health difficulties such as a heart attack, stroke, or brain aneurism.

For example, the EMT who responded to my a call made by my mother when an aneurism in her brain ruptured was insistent that she was merely having a migraine. As my mother is a former ER nurse and also happened to be personally familiar with migraines, she was rather certain it was more serious than that. She was able to convince him (by screaming a few coherent phrases describing what an aneurism was and punctuating them with "you fucking fuck") that she did need to go to the hospital immediately. Had this EMT responded to someone else's mother's aneurism and come to the same conclusion thus failing to appreciate the urgency of the situation - then that someone else's mother would be dead.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 10:06 AM. Reason : fs]

5/11/2012 10:02:55 AM

Quote :

"Yeah, that's what I said. Every single employee in these companies need to be licensed"

So where do you draw the line? The person cutting hair needs to spend thousands on school, take 2 tests, and pay a few hundred for a license; but the person handling my food can be some nose picking, ass scratching, infested schmuck with no government mandated training, safety instruction, or licensing? I tell you, last time I got a hair cut, I was much less worried than the last time I was in a restaurant and saw a server sneeze and keep on working.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 10:18 AM. Reason : .]

5/11/2012 10:17:57 AM

Part of the licensing is to be responsible for your employees and their actions. What's wrong with this model? You could lose your license for unsanitary employees so you're motivated to keep them sanitary.

5/11/2012 11:21:01 AM

So that could apply to pretty much all of these examples then.

The restaurant owner needs a business license, a part of which probably relies on sanitation, thus the owner holds employees accountable and there are no barriers to employment beyond the owner.

Now, why can't it be the same for a salon?

5/11/2012 12:01:15 PM

Quote :

"I'm biased because I have heard so many horror stories from the cosmetologist side compared to the the ems side."

oh please do tell!

Quote :

"Also, just because you only get your hair cut doesn't mean that is all the person is licensed to do. The license allows them to do other things (chemical color, waxing or other hair removal, pedicures) that IMO should require a good deal of training/continuing education"

You shouldn't have be licensed in pedicures in order to cut hair. You shouldn't have to be licensed in chemical color if you're using something from a box that the customer could have just as well bought at the store and used themselves.

5/11/2012 12:29:35 PM

Quote :

"The founders never had to deal with heavy equipment, mass quantities of fertlizer, the distribution of clean water to millions of people, etc."

If such is a problem then the legislature should legislate. Requiring a license has nothing to do with requiring it be done right. Only fines and punishments can do that.

Quote :

"By your logic we'd be going back to covered wagons by now."

Far better to go back to knights in armor and cottage industries?

Quote :

"As Ogilvie (2004) argues, the guilds negatively affected quality, skills, and innovation. Through what economists now call "rent-seeking" they imposed deadweight losses on the economy. Ogilvie says they generated no demonstrable positive externalities and notes that industry began to flourish only after the guilds faded away. Guilds persisted over the centuries because they redistributed resources to politically powerful merchants. On the other hand, Ogilvie agrees, guilds created "social capital" of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. This social capital benefited guild members, even as they hurt outsiders.[14]"

5/11/2012 2:13:49 PM

^^Well any horror story I have is going to sound stupid compared to a life and death emt horror story and I realize that. My argument isn't that cosmetology is just as critical/important/whatever as ems. Unless you can say for sure that you can take an average group of aspiring cosmetologist and put them through the same "amount" of training as emts go through and get out a similar number of proficient/safe cosmetologist, then you are comparing apple to oranges... or cosmetologist to emts. Yes cosmetology is a broad profession but so is mechanical engineering (and probably many other professions that others, including myself, may be inclined to discount).

Also, if you think a hair dresser charges your gf/wife/mother $150 to open a box of color from walmart and follow directions, I don't know what to tell you. I used to be the same way. As far as needing a license to do it for somebody else, the best thing I can come up with is an analogy: Since a 14 year old boy can drive his dad's farm truck (on private property) then he should be allowed to drive a city bus without a license.

Quote :

"For me the difference is that the general skill, education, and quality of service provided by an EMT could be expected to correlate to things like survival rates of accident or crime victims as well as people suffering life-threatening accute health difficulties such as a heart attack, stroke, or brain aneurism. "

So is the shocking part how hard it is to become a cosmetologist or how easy it is to become an emt?

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ]

5/11/2012 2:42:38 PM

The question is who decides. In the case of the pickup trick, it might be stupid for the farmer to let his 21 year old son drive the truck, depending on his driving history, and perfectly fine to let his 14 year old. That the 21 year old managed to get a state issued drivers license doesn't mean he can drive stick or handle the rough terrain of the farm. It is the farmer that faces the liability if the kid hits a neighbors fence and destroys the truck.

Now we're talking about hair. Just because someone jumps through the hoops and gets a license doesn't mean they too can be trusted by the salon owner. It is the salon which faces the liability if the stylist damages someones hair.

But there is a perverse side to licensing. The licenses are expensive and require jumping through hoops. Some competent stylists will either refuse or fail. This means there will be fewer competent stylists available to work. Which means some salon owner somewhere is going to keep on an employee they suspect might be unsafe and would otherwise let go, but it has become just too difficult to find a licensed replacement.

5/11/2012 3:49:10 PM

Quote :

"These threads always devolve into an ideological pissing contest without ever examining the value of balance. Instead of trying to come to agreement on where to draw the line, the conversation always becomes dominated on whether that line should even exist. "

a billion times YES

5/11/2012 6:10:13 PM

Quote :

"Also, if you think a hair dresser charges your gf/wife/mother $150 to open a box of color from walmart and follow directions, I don't know what to tell you. I used to be the same way. As far as needing a license to do it for somebody else, the best thing I can come up with is an analogy: Since a 14 year old boy can drive his dad's farm truck (on private property) then he should be allowed to drive a city bus without a license."

No idea where you're pulling any of that from because it is not at all what I'm saying. It's funny that you mention mechanical engineers though because the industrial exemption clause for professional engineer certification means that in most states it is an entirely voluntary professional certification process if you want to work in private industry. It's a good idea to persue such certification and many employers will encourage it and some insist upon it - meaning that the voluntary aspect of it does not entirely reduce its significance. I'm suggesting that cosmetology might be able to be treated by a system that works fine for engineers - I do not beleive this is being particularly dismissive of their skills or training. I think they should have some of the same flexibility in terms of moving to a new state that is afforded to say a mechanical engineer working for a private company while currently an experienced competent certified (in one state but not one they might move to) cosmetologist would be more restricted by the 50 different mandatory licensing boards.

To reitterate the difference between positions like cosmetologist and EMT - it is the imminent public interest that means mandatory licensing makes more sense for one than for the other. Since EMTs respond to emergencies and will be called upon during natural disasters and are included in things like terrorist, pandemic, and distaster response plans the public need to assure suitability of potential EMTs outweighs what might otherwise be excessive beurocratic intrusion into a professional field.

To a degree, professions and the people who employee them do possess competence when it comes to quality control of its members. Professional associations are often quite good at this and I think that mandatory licensing should, more often than not, be reserved for when there are issues strongly related to public safety. That is because while employers and professional associations can often correct for poor representatives of their field of expertise this is not sufficient when life, limb, or say the outcome of a criminal trial are at stake. In some cases these licensing systems might do well to have an overhaul and we might need to consider ways to get more qualified members into that profession as well as better ensure they receive the training we might expect of them. I am also not against health inspections by any means - restaurants and salons and other places of business where a public health risk would exist in cases of carelessness should be subject to thorough inspections.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 10:40 PM. Reason : ]

5/11/2012 10:22:11 PM

Quote :

"This sounds like a win-win except that in both cases the hegemony of the system is not established or maintained on its merits alone; the trade guilds enforced their dominance by club, torch and intimidation and the professional certification regimes are maintined by force of law. Where the compelling public interest is real, the modern system is night and day compared to the medeival system."

How do you figure one is better than the other? The only difference between the two is which thugs the business owners are paying to enforce their licenses: gov't thugs or random thugs off the street. There is no demonstrable difference between the two.

5/13/2012 3:36:14 PM

Quote :

"Also, if you think a hair dresser charges your gf/wife/mother $150 to open a box of color from walmart and follow directions, I don't know what to tell you."

I don't think this is the service that your hair dresser provides. I think that an individual, any individual, should have the right to provide this service and charge for it. They can charge $150 or $1000, however much someone will pay for it. It is a violation of basic liberty to prevent people from selling obvious services to other people.

If you think that hair services should be more complicated, you should have no right to impose that complication on other people. If I'm dissatisfied with the coloring I get from an inferior product a salon used that was totally off-the-shelf that's my own problem, not yours.

You're assuming that the product is a certain thing, and this is exactly what governments do to impose licenses. The problem is that you don't understand what customers actually want. I don't either, and the concept of economic complexity is that no one does. I totally believe you that hair coloring can be fantastically complicated and liability-prone. And hey, I'm sure you get better color from doing it that way. Your evidence, however, doesn't support your conclusion. Your fears about negligence regarding salon services that you're familiar with lead to support of laws that would prevent a teenager in a trailer park from going to Walmart buying up all the basic hair styling tools, and then start a summer job doing that. This entrepreneurship is the pure essence of economic mobility, and we must protect it.

5/14/2012 8:35:28 AM

This reminds me of that lady who was injecting random stuff into peoples butt tissue to make them have bigger butts

5/14/2012 9:13:22 AM

After thinking about it some I might waffle on this issue, maybe a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. An established cosmetologist isn't going to be hurting much because there have always been cheaper options out there. It may shift around the responsibility of facilities for the ones that rent chairs in salons (unless you are talking about keeping the salon licensing the same), but the worst case scenario is the building owner(s) have to better screen tenants, or employees in the case of a chain. I guess if the owners spend time/money screening more (or dealing with more unacceptable cosmetologist), then rent will be higher or wages will be lower. It's probably a wash from the cosmetologist's financial standpoint since they won't be paying licensing fees or necessarily for formal education. That or the owners could only hire/rent to cosmetologist with proven results and/or a formal education to limit their own liability, but I doubt those savings are passed on to the clientele (a cosmetologist with a better education or success will command more money). The real benefit is a young enterprising hair stylist can open up shop and cut hair on the back porch or kitchen or whatever and honestly I find nothing wrong with that. I mean if she can generate enough business to open a salon or rent a chair at an established one, without a formal education, then more power to her.

So what about barbers? Do you think you should need an education to shave another person's face/neck with a straight razor or should that same chick cutting hair in her kitchen be allowed to do that too? Serious question btw, in case you didn't know (I just learned it myself) the barbering license is totally different (different board and everything in nc) even though there are many overlapping areas. The whole thing reeks of a pissing contest between the two professions.

Quote :

"Minnesota, Michigan and North Carolina are the latest fronts in a spreading legislative campaign to reserve the poles for barbers. The proposals, which often include fines for offenders, are driving a new wedge in a trade where gender lines have long run deep. "The barber pole is the oldest sign in town besides the cross. It should not be displayed where there is not a licensed barber," says Charles Kirkpatrick of Arkansas, a barber since 1959 who keeps tabs on such legislation for the National Association of Barber Boards of America. For many, the only real difference between a barber and hairstylist is the clientele they serve. But barbers say the tools of their trade and unique services they provide make them different, and laws are needed to prevent beauty parlors, salons and other establishments from passing themselves off as barbershops, including chain shops that use the barber name and logo but don't have a licensed barber on site. Cosmetologists argue that haircuts are haircuts, and say the protective efforts are silly and chauvinist."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/story/2012-03-14/barber-pole-dispute/53524516/1

[Edited on May 15, 2012 at 2:12 PM. Reason : ]

5/15/2012 1:59:29 PM