Fallout Boy Wants a PS-3, and Wal-Mart Can't Stop Him!

Colleague and loyal reader JE lets me in on the secret about John Edwards...

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) Stores Inc. said Thursday that a staff member for former Sen. John Edwards _ a vocal critic of the retailer _ asked his local Wal-Mart store for help in getting the potential 2008 presidential candidate a Sony (NYSE:SNE) PlayStation 3. Edwards said it was true, but a mistake on the staffer's part.

Edwards told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart a day after his boss criticized the company, saying it doesn't treat its employees fairly.

"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself.

"Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said.

...Edwards, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 2004, spoke Wednesday to supporters of union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com on a conference call launching the group's holiday season campaign to pressure Wal-Mart for better labor standards.

In the call, he repeated a story about his son Jack disapproving of a classmate buying sneakers at Wal-Mart. "If a 6-year-old can figure it out, America can definitely figure this out," Edwards said.

Let me make a couple minor points here. First of all, why does Edwards have a paid staff? Isn't he an unemployed ex-Senator? Personally, I think I need a both a paid staff and volunteers as well (this blog might get updated more often).

More importantly, this is one more reminder from the Democrats reminding me why I'm a Republican. Let me get this straight -- I'm supposed to get lectured by John Edwards' son on why I should buy more expensive goods from a union-backed retailer over the less expensive goods delivered by a place that actually focuses on satisfying their customers rather than big labor. It does help me understand the superficial appeal of Edwards to Democrats.

To be honest, I'm surprised that little Jack Edwards' classmate didn't punch Jack in the face for lecturing him about his family's shopping choices while Jack's rich daddy can afford to buy his son sneakers wherever the hell he likes. Of course, maybe the kid was afraid of getting sued.

The NEA Imitates South Park

Colleague and loyal reader KS alerts us to the latest from our nation's premier teacher's union...

A National Education Association online poll reveals that actress Jessica Alba is the celebrity most respondents would like to see substitute teach for a day. The star of “Into the Blue” and “Fantastic Four” was the top pick with 46 percent of the vote. The runners-up include Oprah Winfrey (24 percent) followed by Angelina Jolie (14 percent), Will Smith (12 percent) and Andre Agassi (4 percent). NEA received more than 5,000 responses to the poll, which was conducted in advance of Substitute Educators Day on Friday, November 17.

“Although substitute educators play a key role in the classroom, they are often taken for granted,” said Reg Weaver, NEA president. “Our celebrity Substitute Educators Day poll is an excellent way for us to spotlight the collective contributions of substitutes to schools nationwide. Just as actress Jessica Alba toiled long and hard before achieving stardom, substitute educators work tirelessly—and often in relative anonymity—to provide every child with a quality public education."

This immeditely reminds me of two things -- Van Halen's Hot for Teacher and the South Park episode where Natasha Henstridge voiced substitute teacher Ms. Ellen (described by Chef as being "Erin Grey in the second season of Buck Rogers beautiful").

You know, normally I just mock the NEA as the biggest impediment to improving our nation's public schools. But here, I think we have an idea -- let's build robot teachers that look like Jessica Alba! For the females and males of another persuasion, we could have robot Matt Damons (guaranteed to be smarter than the real Matt Damon)! I guarantee school attendence would pick up, especially in high school. And I would bet parents would never skip those parent-teacher conferences.

We could expand this into other areas -- imagine having Jessica Alba as your substitute boss! Wait... I'm pretty sure that might lead to some bad things, so let's move on.

Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity

The Wall Street Journal makes the intelligent argument that raising the minimum wage will likely lead to greater unemployment. Since I took economics in college, I already knew that, but it seems the soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party need a refresher course...

Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive Speaker of the House, has pledged to raise the minimum by over $2, to $7.25 from $5.15. And President Bush has already signaled he'd go along. At the state level, six states not only approved minimum wage hikes in referendums this week but indexed the minimum to inflation going forward. We hope Mr. Bush fights off any attempt at federal indexation and insists on a provision to protect small business.

Raising the minimum wage has been a hardy perennial of the left for decades now. What is striking is the degree to which is has come to be seen as an economic free lunch. Even some reputedly unbiased economists have started to tout the view that raising the minimum wage has no discernible effect on job creation.

But if this were true, they'd be calling for a $10, $20 or even $50-an-hour minimum wage. They're not, and neither is Nancy Pelosi. That's because the law of demand is one of the most dependable precepts of economics. It says that when the price of something goes up, demand for it goes down. An employee's wages are the price the employer pays for his services, so raising their wages means forcing employers to pay more for workers. The price goes up and there is downward pressure on demand for workers. Other things being equal, jobs are lost.

...The theory propounded by the advocates of a higher minimum wage is this: The market for minimum-wage jobs is neither efficient nor fair. Workers don't have adequate information about the alternatives available to them, and employers don't know enough about what the true market-clearing price is. So employers impose an artificially low wage rate on the disadvantaged, who as a result don't work as hard and tend to quit more often than they would if they were paid "fairly." Raising the minimum wage increases productivity and decreases turnover (because workers are more satisfied), which lowers the real cost of the job as well as the frictional costs of constantly seeking and training new workers (costs the employer was unwittingly paying because he didn't know the "correct" price to pay his workers). Everyone is better off; no one suffers.

The problems that afflict this idyll are no different from every attempt to replace market-determined prices with planned ones. Even if it is true that some workers are underpaid, and it probably is (we've never met another journalist who thought ink-stained wretches, as a class, were overpaid), there's still the problem of determining what the right wage is. Why would anyone suppose that Nancy Pelosi knows that better than the supermarket manager?

She doesn't, but politicians never stop to consider whether someone else is smarter than them (as can be seen anytime Joe Biden tries to question a judicial nominee). But raising the minimum wage is one of those stupid things Democrats advocate because it's good politics (in a way, it's the Democrat's version of the gay marriage issue -- the GOP may oppose it, but they don't want to say so pubnlicly for fear of being called the party of the corporate interests). Never mind that passing the raise in the minimum wage costs low-income workers their jobs -- the same workers the Democrats claim to represent. It's not about actually helping people -- it's about perception and benefitting your political allies in the unions, who can claim that this is a victory for the working man. In reality, it's a victory for squashing small-business expansion and encouraging bigger companies to automate. But don't expect anyone on Capitol Hill to say so.

In the meantime... for all the conservatives who thought it was worth it for the GOP to lose both Houses of Congress... the first two major initiatives to pass Congress and be signed by the President next year will likely be a hike in the minimum wage and a guest-worker immigration bill with some form of amnesty. I'm not disagreeing that the party needed a cold slap in the face and will probably emerge from this electoral defeat with an opportunity to reform itself into a better party in the future. The price the country will pay, however, might be greater.

Happy Veteran's Day

Ovedr at Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed has a wonderful post saluting those who have sacrificed for our country. We don't give enough reverence to Veteran's Day -- but the best way to make up for that is by having the appropriate reverence for our veterans. Speaking of which, it might be a good day to give some money to Project Valour.