经济学人下载:荒唐的条例,对无牌室内设计师的可怕威胁

The cost of all this pettifoggery is huge—unless, that is, you are a member of one of the cartels that pushes for pettifogging rules or an employee of one of the bureaucratic bodies charged with enforcing them. Morris Kleiner of the University of Minnesota calculates that licensing boosts the income of licensees by about 15%. In other words, it has about the same impact on wages as membership of a trade union does. (Trade unionists who are also protected by licences enjoy a 24% boost to their hourly wages.) Mr Kleiner also argues that licensing slows job-creation: by comparing occupations that are regulated in some states but not in others he found that job growth between 1990 and 2000 was 20% higher in unregulated occupations than in regulated ones.

所有这些欺瞒要付的代价都是很大的——除非你是推行这些荒唐条例的其中一个联合企业的成员或是某一官僚机构中负责执行这些条例的人。明尼苏达大学的Morris Kleiner估计得到许可证授权的人的收入可以提高15%。也就是说，许可证对工会成员的工资也有相同的影响（工会成员因有许可证的保护，他们每小时的工资要高出24%）. Kleiner先生也认为牌照监管减缓了就业机会的创造：通过把一些在某些州受到监管而在其它州没有受到监管的职业进行比较，他发现在1990年到2000年间，同样的职业不受监管的州比在受监管的州的就业增长要高出20%。

The Institute for Justice, a free-market pressure group, argues that this is only the beginning of the Raj’s sins. The patchwork of regulations makes it hard for people to move from state to state. The burden of regulations falls most heavily on ethnic minorities (who are less likely to have educational qualifications) and on women (who might want to return to work after raising their children). States that demand that funeral directors must also qualify as embalmers, for example, have 24% fewer female funeral directors than those that don’t.

维护自由市场的压力集团美国司法部指出，这只是牌照制度弊端的开始。美国零散的法规使人们很难从一个州搬到另外一个州.这些法规的负担大多数落到少数族裔 (他们更缺少学历)和妇女(她们生完小孩后可能想回去工作) 身上.例如,在那些要求殡仪员也必须取得尸体防腐资格的州,这些州的女性殡仪员要比没有这种要求的州少24%.

Uncle Sam will save you from bad feng shui
山姆大叔将会助你逃离坏风水

You might imagine that Americans would be up in arms about all this. After all, the Licence Raj embodies the two things that Americans are supposed to be furious about: the rise of big government and the stalling of America’s job-creating machine. You would be wrong. Florida’s legislature recently debated a bill to remove licensing requirements from 20 occupations, including hair-braiding, interior design and teaching ballroom-dancing. For a while it looked as if the bill would sail through: Florida has been a centre of tea-party agitation and both chambers have Republican majorities. But the people who care most about this issue—the cartels of incumbents—lobbied the loudest. One predicted that unlicensed designers would use fabrics that might spread disease and cause 88,000 deaths a year. Another suggested, even more alarmingly, that clashing colour schemes might adversely affect “salivation”. In the early hours of May 7th the bill was defeated. If Republican majorities cannot pluck up the courage to challenge a cartel of interior designers when Florida’s unemployment rate is more than 10%, what hope has America? The Licence Raj may be here to stay.

你可能会认为美国人会为此感到满腔怒火。毕竟，牌照制度实现了两件有可能会使美国人大怒的事情：大政府的崛起和减缓了美国创造就业机会机制的运行。那你可能就错了。最近佛罗里达州的立法机构正为一项撤销20种职业的执照要求的法案进行辩论，这20种职业包括头发编织，室内设计和标准舞教学。有一段时间该法案看上去像有可能顺利通过：佛罗里达变成了茶党闹事的中心和参众两院都有共和党的多数派。但是最关心这件事情的是卡特尔的成员，他们为此进行了最响亮的游说。一种说法是没有执照的设计师可能会使用会传播疾病的纺织物，会造成一年有88，000人死亡。另外一种说法甚至更让人吃惊，认为冲突的配色方案可能会对“唾液分泌”产生有害影响。在5月7日凌晨该法案被否决。如果共和党多数派不能鼓起勇气来挑战室内设计师的卡特尔，那么佛罗里达州的失业率将会超过10%。美国能指望什么呢？该国的牌照制度可能会成为定局。