1.  My colleague Don Boudreaux wrote a faux news article where politicians pushed for a “minimum grade law” to help struggling students. It’s just a matter of simple fairness, of course.  I tweeted:
Extra bonus of Boudreaux’s Minimum Grade Law: banning Fs means more diplomas, higher wages for neediest students
If we raised the grades of the weakest students, those students would be more likely to graduate, which would boost their wages on average.  As a matter of simple humanity, how can we not help out those with poor life prospects: those with weak grades?  
The progressive counterargument to the MGL would likely be that we should instead improve the learning process for the weakest students  But when “raising worker productivity” through better education (or perhaps legal unpaid interships and apprenticeships) is used as a counterargument to a higher minimum wage, we hear: Why not either/or when we can do both/and? The same both/and approach should apply to the MGL.  

I genuinely believe that if economists did a decade of empirical research into whether a “minimum grade law” created more harm than good the research would be inconclusive. Who agrees?  

2.  The “precautionary principle” is strong risk-aversion applied to policy issues:

One upside of the minimum-wage debate: it’s thrilling to watch progressives reject the precautionary principle so thoroughly.

There are plenty of stories about how the minimum wage could hurt low-skilled workers a lot in the long run–cutting off the bottom rung of the ladder of opportunity–and there are plenty of stories about how lax environmental regulations could hurt human health a lot in the long run.  Better to play it safe, no?  

3.  Finally this from the great Dan Rothschild: 
[Tweet feigning outrage that politics continues to be political and engenders political behavior among politicians.]