- Incentives Matter - Want to know what a politician really thinks about an issue? Tired of all the confusing rhetoric? Just find out how he feels about incentives.

Byline: Jim Christie, Investor's Daily

If you know what a politician thinks of the minimum wage, you can make a pretty good guess what he thinks of tax cuts. Or of free trade. Or the death penalty. In some ways, that's not a surprise. We expect, after all, that most politicians who oppose the minimum wage will also be in favor of free trade andthe death penalty. These views usually go together, as anyone who follows politics can see. What isn't easy to see is why these views go together. Why issomeone who opposes the minimum wage likely to favor the death penalty? One ofthe issues is economic, after all, while the other isn't. Or so it seems. In fact, many issues that …