Does anyone else remember that when UNC started its Edwards Cent- er, its Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity HEADED BY JOHN EDWARDS!!!!11!, the university promised it would lead to “innovative and practical ideas for moving more Americans out of poverty and into the middle class”?
I’m sure our George Leef does. Here’s what he wrote at the earliest outset hoping vainly to warn the “Edwards Center” away from the rather non-innovative, impractical approach of raising the minimum wage:
Good grief. Appointing someone who believes that raising the minimum wage is a way to ?move people out of poverty,? is about as sensible as appointing someone to head the National Institutes of Health who believes that bleeding the patient is a good way to cure disease. Economists have known for at least a century that if the government artificially raises the price of labor, less labor will be demanded. The minimum wage is one of those feel-good nostrums that politicians fall back on when they need some way of professing their deep compassion for the poor, but it?s actually counterproductive.
So what do we see Edwards doing on this saccharine little blog?