Like Leaches and the U.S.S.R.?

Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn pens a column in today's Bakersfield Californian that compares the minimum wage hike to leaches and wage control in the Soviet Union. Prior to the advent of modern medicine, practitioners in the middle ages treated their patients on gut instinct. If something seemed like a good idea, they tried it. One popular cure-all was the intentional bleeding of patients or the application of leaches, regardless of symptoms. Lacking scientific studies on the results of their treatments, many practitioners continued such practices even though their patients frequently died. Though medicine eventually did away with such ill-conceived and dangerous practices, that kind of backward reasoning can still be found in many present-day practitioners of politics and economics. Sound strongly worded? Read it for yourself.