Today’s Editors’ Choice

• Ed Feulner: The High Cost of Waiting to Drain the Swamp
• Ben Shapiro: But Reality Isn’t Fair
• Jonah Goldberg: Rhetoric Boils Over in Health Care Debate
• Walter Williams: Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

To view all of today’s opinion, click here.

Opinion in Brief

Ben Shapiro: “In 2014, I debated Seattle City Council member and avowed socialist Kshama Sawant. Sawant was one of the chief proponents of a city ordinance that would create a $15 minimum wage. … In our debate, I asked Sawant directly whether she would support a $1,000 minimum wage. She deflected the question, of course. She deflected the question because reality would not allow for a $1,000 minimum wage. Were the government to mandate such an idiocy, every business in the Seattle area would immediately cut back employment, and all of those seeking minimum wage jobs would end up losing their income. As it turns out, it didn’t take a $1,000 minimum wage to destroy the income for minimum wage workers. Thirteen dollars was plenty. According to a paper from The National Bureau of Economic Research, ‘the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per months in 2016.‘ All of this was foreseeable, given the fact that businesses compete with one another to lower cost and thus operate with slim profit margins. That means businesses have two choices when government forcibly raises labor costs: increase prices and thereby lower demand, or cut back on the work force. Businesses opted to do the latter in order to stay competitive. Reality is unpleasant. Perhaps that’s why so few politicians seem willing to face up to it.”