You’ll Never Get Your Hair Cut in this Town Again

Recently, a colleague of mine was asked to research the impact of professional licensing laws and to report her findings to a legislative study committee. Licensing laws have steadily proliferated—in1970, about 10% of the American workforce required a license of some sort in order to earn a living; by 2000, that percentage had doubled to 20%. It is now estimated to be around 29%.

Lest we think of these requirements as evidence of “big brother” or the much-deplored (and largely fanciful) triumph of an insatiable governmental regulatory fervor, most of these rules are the result of lobbying efforts by the occupational groups being regulated. The result is that Indiana—like many states—requires that workers be licensed before they can shampoo or braid your hair, hypnotize you, or decorate your family room.

Licensing laws are justified by concerns for public safety. We license doctors because most patients lack the knowledge to spot charlatans, and the consequences of what academics call “information asymmetry” can be fatal. We license architects and engineers because building collapses are similarly consequential. This justification seems weaker when we get to shampoo girls and interior decorators.

There is statistical evidence that licensing acts as a barrier to entry into a profession, and also as a barrier to labor mobility (since states have different requirements, licenses are considerably less portable than one might imagine). There is also clear evidence that licensing raises consumer prices—depending upon the profession, those increases range from 4-35%.

The study committee was weighing these benefits and burdens, and considering whether other means of protecting consumers in lower-risk situations might be more cost-effective. Certification, for example, might offer a middle ground. Physicians with specialties use this approach—they have numerous board certifications that are administered by professional organizations. Government isn’t involved, and taxpayers don’t pay the administrative costs, but consumers have the benefit of information about that particular doctor’s training and expertise.

Enter political reality.

Facebook postings warned of disease spread by unclean cosmetic instruments. Tweets went out to rally those in the affected occupations. On the day of the hearing, swarms of scissors-wielding hairdressers (and for all I know, livid interior designers and angry hypnotists) descended on the Indiana Statehouse. My colleague, somewhat shell-shocked, reported that those whose scissors were confiscated by security were furious—evidently it hadn’t occurred to them that weapons couldn’t be taken into the Statehouse. She may have to leave town to get her hair cut after this, and she wasn’t even there to advocate de-regulation; she was just reporting what the relevant research showed.

I am not a betting woman, but I’d give odds against any change in the status quo. As any political scientist can confirm, it is easier to stop change than to effect it.

There are a couple of lessons here, for those interested in reality, rather than the ideologies of Right or Left.

The Right needs to admit that government regulations are just as likely to be a product of the economic self-interest of the regulated industry as the expression of authoritarian impulses. At the state level, much of the drumbeat for licensure reflects the (understandable) belief that one’s occupation should be elevated to the status of a profession; much more comes from a less noble desire to restrict entry and increase profits.

The lesson for the Left is that regulations do, in fact, increase costs, and that they are not always the best way to achieve public goods. The perceived benefits in public safety must be weighed against those costs.

The lesson for my colleague is to avoid angry hairdressers brandishing scissors.

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Polarization as Strategy

Matt Yglesias had a very interesting post yesterday about the recent SOPA debate, and the success of opponents to that legislation. He made five points, and it would be hard to argue with any of them: money counts, but once you have enough resources to communicate, having more money doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win the battle; it is easier to stop change than it is to effectuate it. But I found his final two observations–reproduced below–particularly interesting.

Polarization is an illusion of agenda-control: SOPA/PIPA was a completely bipartisan endeavor, promoted by Republican Lamar Smith in the House and Democrat Pat Leahy in the Senate. The opposition was bipartisan too. Democrat Ron Wyden played the crucial role in delaying PIPA in the Senate, but Tea Partiers led the opposition in the House. Nancy Pelosi became a vocal opponent, and at last night’s debate all the Republican presidential candidates were suddenly in opposition. This is a stark contrast to the narrative of partisan polarization, but it illustrates that the parties are polarized in part because the leadership deliberately promotes a polarizing agenda. Leaders deliberately put issues that unite their caucuses on the agenda. When happenstance causes the agenda to be dominated by something outside the main structure of partisanship, the polarization dynamic breaks down.

Public engagement matters: One key difference between this and, say, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is that SOPA/PIPA opponents actually got in the arena and did politics instead of complaining about how this showed that politics is corrupt and stupid. It was the whole boring dreary “call your congressman, sign this petition” rigamarole. Yes, often done in creative and innovating and webby ways. But still fundamentally about the idea that citizens need to communicate their views to elected officials. Members of congress, just like regular people, only have deep commitments to a few priorities. When they suddenly learn that they’ve mis-judged how many of their constituents care about something and which side they’re on, they’re happy to change positions.

The reminder that grass-roots political action can work is timely, but we’ve heard it before. The observation about polarization as a deliberate political tactic is new, at least to me, and certainly seems consistent with our contemporary political environment.

In the Indiana Statehouse–at least according to my lobbyist friends–you can find Rs and Ds on both sides of such issues as the public transportation referendum, or the smoking ban. Increasingly, you can even find a few Republicans defecting from the GOPs anti-gay agenda. But  propose measures that involve partisan power and party funding, like “Right to Work,” and fuzzy lines suddenly become sharp. As Yglesias points out, the same phenomenon occurs in Congress. Raising taxes on the wealthy is a good example.

Responsible legislative leaders would try to minimize the issues that create such stark divisions, so that the people’s business could get done in a thoughtful–or at least civil–fashion. (At this point, most citizens would settle for having our  business done at all.) They would try to establish and strengthen lines of communication, and build trust.

Irresponsible leaders who care only about political power, who don’t care about doing the people’s business, promote polarization and the demonization of the folks on the other side of the aisle.  Those tactics may help them solidify their control, but they undermine both democratic processes and public confidence in government.

There’s a reason Congress has an 11% approval rating. It’s probably just as well there’s no polling on approval of the Indiana General Assembly.

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Factoid Day

A factoid for Friday: Apple Computer–the company most “experts” expected to wither in Microsoft’s glare not all that long ago–reached a market capitalization of 400 Billion yesterday. It is the most valuable technology company in the world–worth more than Greece, Austria, Argentina or South Africa.

Financial analysts and business experts will have a lot to say about Apple’s remarkable story, but for me, the primary lesson we might draw is that Steve Jobs was right to bet on the importance of good design.

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Raining on Indianapolis’ Parade

I don’t care for sports–especially football–and I wasn’t all that thrilled when Indianapolis won the right to host the Super Bowl. But you would have to be even more testosterone-challenged than I am not to recognize the benefits to our City that come with the selection: the local infrastructure improvements, the civic spirit, the amount of money that will flow into the local economy, and most of all, the increased visibility.

One way or another, I’ve worked with civic organizations and/or local government my entire adult life. I still remember being part of a Hudnut Administration focused on creating Indianapolis from “India-no-place” and making it–in his words–“no mean city.”

The Super Bowl is an opportunity to show a billion people that we deserve urban respect. Hundreds of volunteers have been working hard for two years  to make the most of that opportunity.

Do the Governor and General Assembly care? Obviously not. They are willing to use their pissing match over “Right to Work” to give Indianapolis a black eye and diminish the value of hosting a world-class event.

The Republicans picked this fight, but the incredibly inept Democrats aren’t blameless.

Make no mistake: this battle isn’t about workers, or their rights. It’s all about politics and money; unions (even the pathetically weakened variety we have in Indiana) tend to support Democrats, so the Republicans want to weaken them while they have the votes to do so. The Democrats want to protect them for the same reason. And neither side appears to give a rat’s you-know-what about the consequences of raining on our city’s Super Bowl parade. Neither gives any evidence of concern that Indianapolis will once again be viewed as a minor-league city–a place with some nice sports facilities but hayseed politicians unable to see beyond their own narrow self-interest, unable to put Indianapolis’ long-term interests ahead of their own short-term political gratification.

When will we start electing grown-ups to govern us?

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Education Reform Basics

Democrats for Education Reform is an important organization in our state. It’s composed of people–mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats–who want to approach education issues from the standpoint of what is best for children, and without the usual political constraints. (“Political constraints” in this context means automatic obeisance to the teachers’ unions. The organization is not anti-Union, but neither do its members feel obliged to agree with the union on every issue, as Democrats have traditionally done.)

Last night, my husband and I attended an event sponsored by DFER. There were at least a hundred people in attendance, and it was an interesting and diverse crowd: teachers from both traditional public schools and charters, business people, legislators and ordinary citizens concerned with the problems of public education. The speaker was was Stephen Brill, and he was “interviewed” by Matt Tully, the Star columnist who has written movingly about Manual High School and the issues facing educators in our poorer precincts.

Brill has recently written a book (who hasn’t??) about what’s wrong with public education. He is not an educator; he describes himself as a reporter. He made a lot of money establishing Court TV and several magazines; he was self-possessed to the point of smugness, and he made sure the audience knew he teaches a seminar at Yale.

Brill made a number of points that most observers would agree with, and he showed real skill in evading questions for which he clearly had no answers. (Case in point: he forcefully defended testing students as a method of evaluating teacher effectiveness. When I asked him how that should work in inner-city classrooms that experience student turnover in excess of 100% during the school year–classrooms in which the students being tested at the end of the year are not the same children who were tested at the beginning of the school year–he didn’t answer the question; instead, he launched into an extended and mostly irrelevant defense of “doing something” even if that something wasn’t perfect.)

The format was question and answer, and there was a lot of earnest discussion about the importance of good teachers (duh!), the pros and cons of charter schools, and the role of teachers’ unions. But the truly important question was asked at the very end of the program. It was a simple enough inquiry by a woman who identified herself as a longtime proponent of education reform: “how do you define a good education?”

It caught Brill flat-footed. And therein lies the real problem.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the education system is broken. (To his credit, Brill agreed that most suburban schools are no better than the schools serving urban areas–students simply tend to come from homes that have prepared them better.) Pretty much everyone wants to improve public education–I don’t know anyone who’s celebrating the status quo. But all the arguments about how to improve schools, all the fancy talk about measurement and testing and excellence, tends to ignore the central question: what do we mean by education? What should students know when they graduate? What skills should they have? Why? How does education differ from job training? How does education for citizenship differ from education as a consumer good?

The Chamber of Commerce wants schools to produce an “educated workforce.” Parents want schools to provide “marketable skills.” Policy wonks talk about global competitiveness. Our Governor seems fixated on credentialing–turning out students who’ve earned a piece of paper in the least possible amount of time. Some old fogies (me, for example) believe an education requires acquainting students with great literature, with science, with history, with at least a minimal understanding of their government, and–above all–the ability to think logically and critically.

It’s an unresolved–and largely unasked–question, and it’s the elephant in the room. Because if we don’t agree about what an education is, how on earth will we know whether we are providing it?

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