Edward's Big Plan

John Edwards is, once again, right on his priorities but ridiculously wrong on his policies.

He has correctly recognized the national shame that is the U.S.'s poverty rate. His solutions, though, are raising taxes, instituting minimum wage laws, and reducing incentives for investing in American business. The results will be higher employment, reduced growth in living conditions, and a dramatic decrease in economic growth.

What is disconcerting is that Edwards seems to be falling into the Socialist trap of viewing the resources traded in the worldwide economy as somehow being of a fixed quantity. The greatest contribution of Capitalism is to expand development of resources. When you are over0taxing those who are in a position to hasten the development of resources, you reduce the amount of resources in the system. When you disincentive investment and development, you reduce the ability to grow our resources.

The way to cure poverty is not through continued entitlement programs. Johnson started us on this track 40 years ago and we've spent tens of trillions of dollars and have gotten nearly nothing: poverty rate among working-aged adults has only gone down a tiny amount and the poverty rate among children has increased.

The way to cure poverty is by attacking the root causes of poverty while aggressively working to expand jobs.

Edwards plans big for presidency
Candidate: Sacrifice must be priority, too
The Concord Monitor

John Edward says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity. To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes.

Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone."

"It is central to what I want to do as president to do something about economic inequality. I do not believe it is okay for the United States of America to have 37 million people living in poverty," he said in a meeting with Monitor reporters and editors this week. "And I think we need, desperately need, a president who will say that to America and call on America to show their character."

At every stop, Edwards said, he tells voters he'll ask them to sacrifice. Asked to describe what he means, he described his plan for increases in capital gains taxes, saying taxes on "wealth income" should be in line with those on work income.

"I think if we want to fund the things that I think are important to share in prosperity, then people who have done well in this country, including me, have more of a responsibility to give back," he said. Later, he added: "There are no free meals." Like other Democrats, Edwards named his top three priorities as ending the war in Iraq, enacting universal health care and and overhauling the American energy system. "Those are three things instantly I would do," he said.