Drive down neighborhood roads during the summer and you’re sure to see the most iconic of summer sights – a lemonade stand.
For generations, young entrepreneurs have built and managed their own small businesses to earn a little spending money during summer vacation.
Families have used lemonade stands to teach their kids how to purchase ingredients, budget their money and interact with neighbors. Valuable skills in marketing and management can all be traced back to selling lemonade.
But in the last few years, the innocence of lemonade stands has faded as they have fallen victim to needless barriers. In many states, your little CEO might need to obtain operational and zoning permits and comply with your state’s public health and food safety codes. Compliance can cost hundreds of dollars, more than it would ever be worth to run a lemonade stand.
This past Memorial Day weekend, a Colorado mother let her sons open a lemonade stand to earn money for a charity. Within 30 minutes of opening shop, police arrived and asked for a permit. The boys, ages four and six, didn’t have one, so their venture was shut down.
What do stories like this teach our children about freedom and hard work?
Some states are trying to exempt minors’ small businesses from needing permits. But permit requirements reach all levels of business in hundreds of industries. Kids aren’t the only ones getting shut down for trying to make a buck.
Sixty years ago, about 1 in 20 workers needed to obtain a license to do their jobs. Today, that number is 1 in 3! You need a license for any number of jobs, from arranging flowers to selling cookies from your home to braiding hair. If you’re caught performing these jobs without a license, you can face hundreds of dollars in fines.
Licensing requirements are bad for businesses and bad for workers. They keep talented, hard-working people from doing jobs they love. The jobs that require licenses and permits are often honest, blue-collar jobs and hit middle- to lower-income families the hardest.
Just like the kids running your local lemonade stand, Americans should be given more opportunities to work without barriers to their success.
Read more about barriers to success here.