The Blue and Red State Minimum Wage Divide
Bob Geiger at the Yellow Dog Blog observed:
..."Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level, with Washington and Oregon topping the scale at $7.35 and $7.25 per hour, respectively. Californians earn a minimum of $6.75 per hour while San Francisco – that proud bastion of liberalism – requires that employers pay at least $8.50 per hour.
"Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level and two are below. Fortunately, Ohio with a lowly $4.25 per hour minimum and Kansas, with a scrooge-like $2.65 per hour rate, are superceded by the federal law. Six states have no minimum wage law, which make the federal $5.15 per hour the de facto standard. ...
"Of the parts of the United States making some effort to provide a working wage for our families, all but two of those states voted for John Kerry in 2004 and tend to vote Democratic in most national elections. ...
"[This] means that these are primarily liberal-leaning states and an excellent example of why we should wear that label proudly going into the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. In doing better at defining ourselves – rather than letting Republicans misrepresent who we are – drawing these kinds of distinctions is central to our definition of what being liberal and Democratic means." ...
Read the whole post here.