October 18, 2005

John Edwards: Rich Man vs. Poor Man

Former Kerry stooge John Edwards is beginning a campaign against poverty. He's traveling around the country by bus, and plans to stop at various big name colleges and universities, including Univesity of California Berkeley and Yale.

At the University of North Carolina, Edwards said students can make a difference in the divide between the rich and the poor.

"They have always lived on a razor blade," Edwards said of the poor who were devastated by the Gulf Coast hurricane. "The problem is it doesn't take much to knock them off."

He asked the students to spend 20 hours a semester doing volunteer advocacy for issues such as raising the minimum wage.

Economist Walter Williams has this to say about minimum wage:

The crucial question for any policy is not what are its intentions but what are its effects? One of its effects is readily seen by putting yourself in the place of an employer and asking: If I must pay $6.25 or $7.25 an hour to whomever I hire, does it make sense for me to hire a worker whose skills enable him to produce only $4.00 worth of value per hour? Most employers would view doing so as a losing economic proposition. Thus, one effect of minimum wages is that of discriminating against the employment of low-skilled workers.

Williams also had this to say about our litigous society:

I think that the litigiousness of Americans and what judges allow to come to court is really amazing. The costs that lawyers can impose on firms, if the corporations are going to survive, are pushed on to the consumers of the product and the stockholders. It's a huge cost on our society. We can see that cost by looking at the suits brought against tobacco companies. Some of those multi-million dollars suits have been successful. You'll see the tobacco company lose a suit, yet its stock does not go down. Why? Because they're pushing that cost on to the consumers in the form of higher prices.

So John Edwards, a trial lawyer who made his millions by suing doctors for malpractice regarding babies who were born with cerebral palsy--a practice which undoubtedly hiked medical costs for rich and poor alike--thinks students whose parents can afford to send them to expensive, exclusive schools can make a difference by spending 20 hours a semester stumping for an increase in the minimum wage.

As a nation, we've been "waging the war on poverty" since Lyndon Johnson was president. You'd think we'd have made some headway after 30 years. No? Then maybe the "conventional wisdom" espoused by Democrats like Edwards isn't working.

The only ones being helped by this ridiculous scheme are John Edwards, who gains from the PR, and the students, who can put their volunteer work on their resumes when they go out into the world to become teachers, lawyers, social workers, etc.

All aboard!

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