Henderson on Phelps

On the opinion page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), David Henderson has a nice piece on Ned Phelps. An excerpt:

Edmund S. Phelps is difficult to categorize politically. On the one hand, he decries the lack of dynamism in Europe (as he did on this page on Tuesday) and wants European governments to deregulate their economies. On the other, he believes that low-end jobs don't pay enough and wants the government to subsidize such jobs. He understands that the minimum wage prices people out of labor markets, resulting in "idleness, deprivation, drugs and crime." So, in his 1997 book, "Rewarding Work: How to Restore Participation and Self-Support to Free Enterprise," he advocated a vast subsidy program that would have cost $125 billion in 1997 dollars, a whopping 1.5% of that year's GDP.