The Licensing Racket : How we Decide who is Allowed to Work, and why it Goes Wrong

Description

A bottom-up investigation of the broken system of professional licensing, affecting everyone from hairdressers and morticians to doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and those who rely on their services.Tens of millions of US workers are required by law to have a license to do their jobs—about twice as many as are in unions. The requirements are set by over 1,500 industry-specific licensing boards, staffed mainly by volunteers from the industries they regulate. These boards have enormous power to shape the economy and the lives of individuals. As consumers, we rely on licensing boards to maintain standards of hygiene, skill, and ethics. But their decisions can be maddeningly arbitrary, creating unnecessary barriers to work. And where boards could be useful, curbing harms and ensuring professionalism, their performance is profoundly disappointing.When Rebecca Haw Allensworth began attending board meetings, she discovered a thicket of self-dealing and...