Another driver of income inequality

 Licensing and state regulation is one of the primary ways that the corporatist state extends its powers into new realms.  Rent seekers love licensing because it empowers the incumbents and undercuts their competitors.  Over time more and more requirements are added, ostensibly to 'protect the public' and 'improve quality' but usually they are simply mechanisms to limit competition to the existing cozy oligopoly.  For example, one must go to school for a year to cut hair for money in Missouri.  Lawyers and accountants must not only pass an extensive and comprehensive test of their professional knowledge but must also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attending colleges for 6 or 7 years. The result, those that are good at school and have stable families and access to capital and the better part of a decade for education flourish, while the weak and the poor and unconnected are screwed.
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This is what they call "liberal compassion".