Semper Gratus!

Fellow FReeper Tolerance Sucks Rocks gets credit for this find: Cato Experts Comment on Pelosi’s “First 100 Hours” Agenda

It’s so easy for Democrats and other socialists to come up with bumper-sticker slogans for their commie agenda items. Take minimum wage for example: “Everyone deserves to be paid a ‘living wage’ and anyone who opposes a hike in the minimum wage is an evil, greedy bastard.” But the reality of this false wage floor is hard to fit on the average car’s bumper. It can be explained in two paragraphs.

* 100 Hours: Raising the Minimum Wage

James A. Dorn, Cato’s vice president for academic affairs:

Contrary to the rhetoric, the people harmed the most by minimum-wage legislation are precisely those it is intended to help — the poor. The idea that legislators can help low-income workers simply by mandating a pay raise is the height of hubris. While the minimum-wage rhetoric may sound good, the reality is quite different. Forcing employers to pay low-skilled workers a higher than market wage — in the absence of any changes in productivity — will decrease the number of workers hired (the law of demand).

It would be much wiser to let workers and employers freely negotiate wages than to enact a minimum wage law that interferes with freedom of contract and prevents low-skilled workers from gaining the experience and work ethic necessary to achieve higher living standards. Increasing the minimum wage may give legislators great pride and win them votes, but it does not address the key issue of how to achieve economic growth and thus reduce poverty.

The people who work for minimum wage are mostly very young and inexperienced. Statistics show that the vast majority of this group earns at least a 10% raise within 6-10 months. The only reason one can conceivably be stuck in perpetuity at the bottom of the wage scale is incompetence! Anyone willing to work, be responsible, show up every day and put in an honest day’s work will quickly learn how NOT to be poor.

Next up is one of my pet peeves. It really burns me when I hear all this caterwalling about “Bush hates people with Parkinsons!” because he won’t throw good money after bad by increasing tax-payer funding for stem cell research.

* 100 Hours: Promoting Life-Saving Stem Cell Research

Sigrid Fry-Revere, the Cato Institute’s director of bioethics research:

Stem cell research would be better off without federal funding. History has shown that the government funding of medical research is bureaucratic, wasteful, and contentious. Government funding tends to slow down development, not speed it up. Put quite simply, politics gets in the way. Funds come and go with the political winds. The majority in Congress today might not be there tomorrow, and lawsuits can stall or prevent the distribution of funds — several lawsuits have already held up implementation of the California stem cell funding appropriations bill for two years. Finally, government funded research is a form of subsidy — tax payers are covering the initial research and development costs for treatments that potentially could bring pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies billions in profits without their having to take the financial risks usually associated with such developments. (emphasis mine)

If stem cell research were the be-all and end-all of life saving medicines, the pharmaceutical and biotech companies would be all over it. They wouldn’t wait for the Feds to come running with buckets of cash — unless they got wind that the cash was coming! Then they would all sit around the lab drinking lattes and playing Nintendo and insisting that they need larger and larger grants. Capitalism has created the best R&D the world has ever known and left to itself, will continue to churn out better and better cures for what ails ya.

This dovetails quite nicely with the next brainiac policy.

* 100 Hours: Requiring Medicare to Negotiate Lower Drug Prices

Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies:

Pharmaceutical research saves lives. The Democrats propose to drive down prices for prescription drugs today even if it means there will be fewer new medicines tomorrow. The idea is to buy the votes of today’s seniors without tomorrow’s seniors catching wise.

Didn’t we learn in the 30′s that price and wage fixing is bad? When the government tells business owners that their products are too expensive and sets legal limits on prices, businesses fail. They try to paint pharmacuetical companies as horrible profiteers that drive people to ruin who need the drugs the most, when these same companies are the reason we are living longer and healthier lives. No credit is ever given to the remarkable breakthroughs and near miracles they have visited on nearly every one of us over the past decades. These companies can spend up to a half a billion dollars in R&D and the years of clinical trials necessary to push a new drug through the FDA. Isn’t it their right to try and recoup that investment so that they can use the profits to fund research on the next great drug?

There are a few more nuggets of knowledge in the CATO article. I highly recommend a visit over there.