A ridiculous column about the need for licensing the professions

Today's Doonesbury jokes about "Joe the Plumber" not being a licensed plumber. A few days ago, Timothy Carney's column in the Examiner, "Free All of the Joe the Plumbers," says:

Liberal bloggers and mainstream journalists have pegged it as scandalous or mock-worthy that Joe is engaging in unlicensed plumbing. Instead we should be asking why the City of Toledo, Ohio, or any city, county, or state, is justified telling its citizens whom they can or cannot hire to fix a leaky pipe.

The short answer is that improperly installed building systems are problematic. Even when they are licensed. The general contractor with plumbing experience that we used first, well we spent $3,000 on him, without recourse for getting the money back. Then we had to spend $700 more to fix something he did wrong, and more than $1,000 to get the things working that he couldn't get to work or blew off because he was lazy.

And that doesn't even get to the fact that Joe the Plumber doesn't know much about business. A plumber grossing $250,000/year doesn't make $250,000 in net income. From gross income you deduct expenses to yield net income. Anyway, Joe Fabian is the plumber we used to get our systems work. He's a "Joe the Plumber" that does make a lot more money than the national average (about $48,000/year), a lot more!, but he's worth it.

There's nothing in the law that prevents people from working on their own house. But when you pay someone else, it's a different situation. You'd think that Joe the Plumber and Tim Carney would recognize this.