Libertarian Rating of States

Many posts have discussed differences among the states, with special emphasis on California and Texas.

William Ruger and Jason Sorens at Cato:

This 2023 edition of Freedom in the 50 States presents a completely revised and updated ranking of the American states on the basis of how their policies protect or infringe on individual liberty.

This edition improves on the methodology for weighting and combining state and local policies to create a comprehensive index. Authors William Ruger and Jason Sorens introduce many new policy variables suggested by readers and changes in the broader policy environment (e.g., universal school choice and state laws that shape local zoning authority).

More than 230 policy variables and their sources are available to the public on this website. New policy variables include a battery of state‐​level land‐​use laws affecting housing, several new occupational licensing measures, a reworked household goods moving company licensing variable that focuses on the “competitor’s veto” element, qualified immunity limitations, and new abortion laws for the alternative indices. In this edition, the authors have updated their findings to

• Provide the most up‐​to‐​date freedom index yet, including scores as of January 1, 2023.
• Retrospectively evaluate how state COVID-19 responses affected freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
• Refresh their analysis of how the policies driving income growth and interstate migration have changed—before and after the Great Recession and during the pandemic.

In addition to providing the latest rankings as of the beginning of 2023, the 2023 edition provides annual data on economic and personal freedoms and their components back to 2000 and for some variables, back to the 1930s.

To read the full report, visit Free​dominthe50S​tates​.org.

See in particular, the writeups for California (#48), Texas (#17), and Florida (#2) 

 

Trust in Institutions 2023

Jerry M. Jones at Gallup:

Gallup’s annual update on trust in government institutions and actors finds Americans have the most faith in local government (67%) and the least faith in the legislative branch of the federal government, or Congress (32%). Between these two extremes, majorities express trust in state government and the American people, while less than half are confident in the executive and judicial branches of the federal government, elected officials and candidates for office, and in the federal government’s ability to handle both domestic and international problems.

These data are from Gallup’s annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 1-23. The poll finished just before Congress averted a possible government shutdown at the start of the new fiscal year by temporarily extending federal funding until mid-November. The vote to remove Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy -- a first in U.S. history -- also occurred after the poll was completed.

Trust in each institution or actor is statistically similar to a year ago, except for Congress, which saw a drop of six percentage points, from 38% expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust in it last year to 32% this year.

However, all institutions have below-average trust levels compared with historical Gallup norms dating back to the early 1970s. Most of these -- all but state and local governments -- have trust scores more than 10 points below the historical average for that institution. Trust in the judicial branch, usually one of the most trusted branches (averaging 66%), is furthest from its historical average, with its current 49% confidence rating 17 points below its typical rating since 1972.

 

School Choice Redux

At Vox, Andrew Prokop explains why the school choice movement is making progress with education savings accounts:

Universal voucher bills had long failed because most parents didn’t want radical disruption of the public school status quo. The pandemic brought this radical disruption. Polarizing battles unfolded over school closures, mask and vaccine requirements, and (after reopening) how long kids should be kept home if classmates tested positive.

Then the culture war that erupted over race, gender, and sexuality teaching in schools in 2020 and beyond ensured that things never entirely returned to “normal.” Activists like Christopher Rufo argued that “critical race theory” concepts were pervading teaching about race, Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok spread videos of educators discussing gender identity, and such matters became omnipresent on Fox News and in conservative media.

In the right’s narrative, parents reasonably recoiled against the incompetence or ideological extremism of educators. In the left’s narrative, conservatives targeted the public school system with a strategic and unrelenting campaign of vilification, laden with exaggeration and moral panic. “The overriding message has been to drive a wedge between parents and public schools,” Polikoff said.

Conservative activists saw opportunity. “It is time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture war,” the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene and James Paul wrote in 2022.

In a 2019 survey, 31 percent of Republican respondents said they had very little or no confidence in public schools; in a 2022 survey, that number had risen to 50 percent. Democratic and independent voters, in contrast, remained roughly as confident in the public school system as before the pandemic.

But the drop in Republican support shifted the previous political status quo, especially in red states, making rank-and-file GOP voters less hostile about proposals to shake up the system.

Sticky States

Texas natives likeliest to ‘stick’ around, pointing to state’s economic health

Ana Pranger, Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas August 29, 2023

The share of people born in a state and who stay there can provide an important measure of its attractiveness to workers. The stickiness of native residents is also key to maintaining a stable (or growing) population and workforce, which is vital to economic growth.

To figure out which states are best at retaining their native residents, we calculated the stickiness of each state. Using American Community Survey (ACS) data, we estimated the share of people born in each state who still lived in that state as of the 2021 survey (Chart 1).

Downloadable chart | Chart data

Texas is the stickiest state in the country by far, with approximately 82 percent of native Texans still living here in 2021. Other sticky states include North Carolina (75.5 percent), Georgia (74.2 percent), California (73.0 percent) and Utah (72.9 percent).

At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming is the least-sticky state, with only 45.2 percent of natives remaining there. North Dakota and Alaska were the only other states with less than half their native population staying there (48.6 percent and 48.7 percent, respectively). Rhode Island (55.2 percent) and South Dakota (54.2 percent) round out the bottom five.

Notably, the least-sticky states tend to see high levels of outmigration of everyone—not just their native residents (Chart 2).Downloadable chart | Chart data

Overall outmigration numbers track everyone moving from one state to another state, including both people born there and those who moved there before leaving, making them a better indicator of population flows.

In addition to being the stickiest state, Texas had the lowest outmigration rate in 2021, followed by Maine and Michigan. Wyoming, Alaska and Hawaii experienced the highest outmigration rates.

The California Effect and Red State Pushback

At NYT, Conor Dougherty reports that California Assembly Member Buffy Wicks (D) declined to run for the House because she could accomplish more as a state legislator.

Consider, she said, an internet-privacy bill she drafted last year, called the Age-Appropriate Design Code. It requires websites to ratchet up their default privacy settings to protect children from online tracking and data collection. The bill was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom over the opposition of the tech industry, which argued that it was too complicated to implement and tantamount to a state law setting national policy. That, in fact, was the point: Wicks passed the law with help from a member of Britain’s House of Lords, who had created similar regulations in her country, in the hope that if Britain and California passed the same rules, a global standard was likely to follow.

California has been so successful at bending national policy in its direction that academics have taken to calling the phenomenon the California effect. From labor and consumer protections to corporate governance, energy and animal-welfare measures, California’s laws are the most widely copied in the nation. Most corporations can’t afford to ignore its mammoth market (its $3.6 trillion economy is the world’s fifth-largest, exceeding India’s); they often end up adopting California’s rules across the country because doing so is cheaper than trying to craft two separate sets of products and policies.

For decades, California has been able to fund a sprawling administration whose agencies have federal-size budgets and wide latitude to set and enforce rules. But as the nation has fractured along cultural and economic lines, Republican governors, like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, have sought to experiment with legislative activism of their own — a kind of anti-California effect. Recently, a number of red states have tried to create conservative guidelines for textbooks, explored ways of preventing companies from paying for employees’ abortions, tried to stop (or at least slow) the move away from fossil fuels and sought to limit Medicaid patients’ access to gender-transition care.

Michigan Repeals Right to Work Law

 Nick Niedzwiadek at Politico:

In a major victory for labor unions, Michigan on Friday became the first state in more than half a century to repeal a right-to-work law.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, overturning a 2012 GOP law that allowed workers to choose not to join unions or pay union dues as a condition of employment, even if the union represents them in negotiations.

...

The anti-union law’s repeal is a particularly significant symbolic victory given the special place Michigan holds in the organized labor movement.

“For us, being the home of labor and getting attacked 10 years ago was a gut punch to workers across Michigan,” state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, the sponsor of MI SB34 (23R), told POLITICO. “We are a state so steeped in union activism and union history that we knew this was a policy that our constituents wanted for the last 10 years as well.”

Even with the move, more than half the states in the country have right-to-work laws on the books. The Michigan Legislature’s repeal is the first since Indiana did so in 1965, before reverting in 2012. (Missouri voters in 2018 blocked a right-to-work law passed by Republican lawmakers.)

Movement for a Constitutional Convention

There has not been a constitutional convention since the original in Philadelphia. A 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service discusses the process of calling a convention, as well as the questions and uncertainties surrounding that process. In the 1990s, the issue came up in the context of a balanced budget amendment.

Grace Panetta and Brent D. Griffiths at Business Insider:

"You take this grenade and you pull the pin, you've got a live piece of ammo in your hands," Santorum, a two-time GOP presidential candidate and former CNN commentator, explained in audio of his remarks obtained by the left-leaning watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Insider. "34 states — if every Republican legislator votes for this, we have a constitutional convention."

...

This isn't an exercise, either. State lawmakers are invited to huddle in Denver starting on Sunday to learn more about the inner workings of a possible constitutional convention at Academy of States 3.0, the third installment of a boot camp preparing state lawmakers "in anticipation of an imminent Article V Convention."

...

Some states have tried and tried — without result — to prompt a constitutional convention. They've together issued hundreds of pro-convention resolutions or calls over 200 years to reroute constitutional amendment powers away from Washington. What's new now is the ever-evolving power coupling of a corporation-backed ideological juggernaut led by ALEC, a nonprofit organization with close ties to large tobacco and drug companies, and a determined Republican Party increasingly dominating many of the nation's 50 statehouses.

...

The planks of the Convention of States' movement — such as term limits for federal bureaucrats in addition to members of Congress — stand to attract acolytes of Trumpism savoring the means to MAGA-fy the Constitution, and therefore, the nation.

In fact, it already has. Constitutional convention boosters include many of Trump's current and former allies, including conservative legal scholar John Eastman, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.

...

A new report by the Center for Media and Democracy first shared with Insider finds that Republicans would control at least 27 and up to 31 out of 50 delegations to a convention, based on delegate selection processes in applications passed thus far.

Public Opinion and Federalism

 Frank Newport at Gallup:

There is some evidence speaking to Americans' preference for state versus federal control of government. In 2016, Gallup asked Americans, "Which theory of government do you favor: concentration of power in the state government or concentration of power in the federal government?" This was an update of a question included in one of Gallup's earliest surveys in 1936. At that point, in the middle of the Great Depression and President Franklin Roosevelt's massive mobilization of the federal government in the New Deal program, 56% of those interviewed favored the federal government approach. By the time Gallup asked the question again in 1981, in Ronald Reagan's first year in office, the public had flipped, favoring the state power alternative by 56% to 28%. The most recent results from 2016 showed a similar response, with 55% choosing the state government alternative and 37% choosing the federal government.

Political identity is highly related to preferences for state versus federal power. Remarkably, this partisan difference has persisted over the past eight decades. In 1936, 72% of Democrats favored the federal government theory of government, compared with 35% of Republicans. In 2016, 80 years later, 62% of Democrats favored the federal government, compared with 17% of Republicans.

More generally, a good deal of data show that the American public is more confident in their state government than in the federal government. This reflects the truism that Americans are, in general, more positive about government the more local it is. State governments routinely inspire more confidence than the federal government. And local governments inspire more confidence than state governments. As a September 2021 Deloitte Insights review pointed out, "Distant government tends to be distrusted government."

Gallup's most recent Governance poll, conducted in September 2021, showed that 37% of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the legislative branch of government, 44% of Americans have confidence in the executive branch and 54% have confidence in the judicial branch. Americans' confidence in their state government is at the 57% level (a great deal or fair amount) and faith in local government is at 66%.

A Pew Research survey conducted April 25-May 1 of this year showed similarly that 32% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the "federal government in Washington," 54% have a favorable opinion of "your state government" and 66% a favorable opinion of "your local government." Last August, as another example, a Gallup survey showed that Americans gave the federal government the lowest positive image rating of any of 25 business and industry sectors tested.

In summary, we have a situation as far as public opinion is concerned in which Americans have for decades been more positive about their state government than the federal government, in which Americans hold the federal government in very low regard, and in which, when asked, Americans appear to tilt toward the idea that states should have more power than the federal government.

State and Local Government Employment

From the Census:

 Education, hospitals, and police protection constitute the largest functional categories of state and local governments. In March 2021, 12.6 million people were employed on a full- or part-time basis in a capacity related to these functions. The remaining 6.2 million employees worked in other functional categories. Education, the single largest functional category for state and local government (which includes elementary and secondary, higher, and other education), employed 10.5 million people. Among those public education employees, 7.8 million worked at the local government level, primarily in elementary and secondary education. State governments employed another 2.7 million education employees, mostly in higher education. The next largest functional category, hospitals, employed 1.1 million state and local government employees. Of those employees, 0.7 million worked at the local government level, and 0.5 million worked at the state government level. Police protection, which includes people with power of arrest as well as other police support staff, accounted for 1.0 million workers for state and local governments. Local level governments employed 0.9 million of all police protection workers, and 0.1 million worked at the state government level. 

 

California Does Not Work Well

At CalMatters, Dan Walters writes about California public policy, starting with an annual report by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association:

This year’s version, called “Follow the Money 2021,” contains dozens of examples of how public funds have been squandered, embezzled or otherwise misused, plus situations HJTA says show politicians getting special treatment.

One could quibble with some of the examples, but in the main they indicate that taxpayers often are not getting as much bang for their bucks as they should.

So, one might wonder, how does California compare with other states in that regard?

By happenstance, as HJTA was preparing its report, an organization called Wallet Hub was offering an answer.

In March, Wallet Hub, a website devoted to consumer finance, released a study of what it calls “return on investment,” merging tax burdens with quality of services to develop an index that compares states on how efficiently they spend public funds.

The factors included in the service side of the equation include schools, roadways, hospitals, crime, water quality and poverty. Minnesota is scored as having the best services.

Unfortunately — but perhaps not surprisingly — California does not fare well in its “return on investment” score. In fact, it’s the fourth worst overall, just ahead of Hawaii, New Mexico and North Dakota. New Hampshire scores the highest, followed by Florida and South Dakota.

Mixed News on Statehouse Reporting

Elisa Shearer and colleagues at Pew:

A new Pew Research Center study finds that the total number of reporters assigned to the 50 state capitols to inform citizens about legislative and administrative activity has increased by 11% since 2014, the last time this study was conducted. The gain comes largely from two main developments: new nonprofit news outlets that are employing statehouse reporters, and a shift to more part-time statehouse reporting.

Indeed, although the total number of statehouse reporters has increased, fewer reporters are now covering state governments full time. Out of the 1,761 statehouse reporters identified by this study, just under half (850, or 48%) report on the statehouse full time. This means that they are assigned to the state’s capitol building to cover the news there on a full-time basis – either year-round or during the legislative session – reporting on everything from legislative activity to the governor’s office to individual state agencies. Being fully devoted to this coverage often provides the greatest opportunity to engage with the statehouse and produce stories that go beyond the basic contours of daily news. The remaining 911 statehouse reporters either cover the beat part time, are students/interns (whether at a university-run news service or at another news outlet) or are other supporting staff.

This is a notable change from 2014, when more than half of statehouse reporters were covering state government on a full-time basis. The total number of full-time statehouse reporters nationally has fallen from 904 in 2014 to 850 in 2022, while the number of reporters covering statehouses less than full time has risen markedly (from 688 to 911).

Filling a State News Void

 Elahe Izadi at WP:

With funding from foundations and a variety of donors, States Newsroom formed two years ago to attempt to fill a void in what many government watchdogs and civil-society experts believe is one of the biggest manifestations of the local journalism crisis — the dire shortage of reporters covering state government.

On Monday, States Newsroom will announce plans to nearly double its presence, from its current 25 states to about 40 over the next two and a half years. It will open its next five outlets in Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, South Carolina and Kentucky. It’s also launching “News from the States,” a new online clearinghouse to showcase all their affiliates’ reporting.

...

The number of newspaper reporters dedicated to covering statehouses has been declining for decades, dropping by 35 percent between 2003 and 2014 and outpacing overall newspaper job losses over that time, according to Pew Research Center survey. And that was before the more recent blows to the newspaper industry, with nearly 6,000 journalism jobs and 300 newspapers vanishing between 2018 and early 2020, according to a University of North Carolina study, even before the pandemic worsened their economic picture.

Enterprising activists, interest groups, bloggers and trade publications have attempted to fill the gap by monitoring the machinations of lawmakers and regulatory agencies. Nonprofits have also increasingly stepped up, sometimes in collaboration with corporate media, such as the Associated Press’s partnership with Report For America, which partially funds salaries for reporters at local news organizations. ProPublica expanded its local reporting network to pay for journalists at seven organizations to focus squarely on state government.

Blue Inequality

 From The New York Times:

It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. Instead of asking, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Democrats need to spend more time pondering, “What’s the matter with California?”

California's Corridor of Corruption

Dan Walters at CalMatters:

Campaign contributions are a semi-legal way for those who benefit from political decisions to express their gratitude, but they can backfire legally if there is some overt quid pro quo. During the Shrimpgate investigation, Capitol politicians were ensnared for demanding both campaign money and personal payoffs from undercover FBI agents seeking legislation to benefit a fictitious shrimp processing company.

So-called “behested” payments are another. Interest groups curry favor by making “contributions” to politicians’ favorite charities that sometimes employ the politicians’ relatives, as CalMatters writer Laurel Rosenhall has detailed. There are limits on direct campaign contributions, but none on behested payments. Belatedly, the Fair Political Practices Commission is promulgating new disclosure rules.

The federal indictment of Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas alleges another wrinkle in the corruption game. Ridley-Thomas, who has jumped from office to office for the last three decades, is accused of helping a University of Southern California administrator obtain hefty county contracts in return for getting his son, Sebastian, a no-cost graduate degree and a full-time faculty position.

...

Indictments of officials and political players in the small communities on the periphery of Los Angeles are so common that they scarcely raise an eyebrow. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon calls his Los Angeles County district a “corrridor of corruption.”

...

 It’s not uncommon for members of the public to declare that all politicians are crooks. They aren’t. Most are sincere and honest, whether or not one agrees with their actions.

However, there is corruption and it flourishes most often when there is no meaningful political competition, when politicians believe that they own their positions and are entitled to pieces of the action, and when the watchdogs are not watching closely enough

California Legislative Tracker

David Lesher at CalMatters:

Six years ago, we started CalMatters with a bold mission to deliver strong public service journalism that empowers Californians to engage with their state government. I’m excited to share with you that we’re continuing this commitment with the launch of Glass House: California Legislator Tracker.

Our team has been working hard to create an accessible place where Californians can learn about their lawmakers and monitor their behavior. You can search for your lawmakers by entering your address and find information on your state Senator and Assemblymember.

Each lawmaker has a page that shares their key biographical information, how they lean politically based on their voting record, which committees they serve on, how special interest groups rate them, the politics of their district and their contact information so you can reach out to them.

Check out the tracker yourself, and let me know what you think. We will continue to add features that create more understanding about each legislator including where they get their money and key details about how they work within the policy making process. That’s why I’m asking for your support.

The Census and the States

Reid Wilson at The Hill:

In the last decade, the white share of the population dropped in all 50 states.

“The percentage of the country that is non-Hispanic white is decreasing and more and more jurisdictions, states, big cities are becoming majority people of color,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist at Menlo College who studies population trends. “People of color are gaining in power.”

Washington state saw its white population shrink by the largest margin of any state, down 8.7 percentage points over the last decade. Massachusetts, Nevada and Connecticut all saw declines of more than 8 percentage points as they become more diverse.

Six states are majority minority, meaning they have more minority residents than white residents: Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas were on that list 10 years ago. Now, Nevada and Maryland have joined them.

Even the whitest states in the nation got more diverse. In the last decade, four states — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Vermont and Maine — were more than 90 percent white. Now, only Maine is still above the 9-in-10 mark.

The only place it increased: Washington, D.C., where whites now trail Black Americans as a share of the population by just 2 percentage points.

Mila Jasper at The Sacramento Bee:

The findings of the U.S. Census Bureau, released Thursday, marked a historic moment: for the first time on record, the white population declined. California beat the national trend with a white population that declined by 1.2 million people, or 8.3%, according to 2020 census data.

Across California, white people declined as a share of the population from 40.1% to 34.7%. Latinos also became the largest ethnic group in California, making up 39.4% of the population statewide, according to the census data. 

 

Pandemic Surprise: States Flush with Money

 Reid Wilson at The Hill:

In states across the country, legislators who once stared into a terrifying abyss of red ink now face an embarrassment of riches, funded by a booming stock market, rising wages for those at the upper end of the economic stratosphere and what economists say is an unprecedented shift in the way consumers are spending their money.

Budget cycles differ by state, and legislators everywhere are in different stages of arranging their fiscal houses.

But the trends are clear: Minnesota, which once faced a $1.3 billion deficit, now expects a $1.6 billion surplus. Michigan budget figures earlier this year showed a $2.5 billion surplus. Connecticut’s surplus was estimated at $70 million in January, and $130 million by March.

Colorado’s surplus stands north of $5 billion. Rhode Island will have an extra $44 million to play with. Oregon’s tax revenue came in so far ahead of expectations that the state is expecting to shell out more than $500 million in refunds to taxpayers, a provision in state law known as the “kicker.”

The catastrophe avoided comes in part from a stock market that has exploded during the pandemic. The S&P 500 index is up 81 percent since its nadir on March 20, 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 76 percent over the same period. Capital gains from those advances have helped make up for lost revenue growth; in states like California, specific initial public offerings from companies like DoorDash and Airbnb provided their own unique boosts.

State residents also played a role in boosting state revenue. With most service businesses shuttered, consumer spending shifted to goods, especially through e-commerce. A 2018 Supreme Court decision forcing online retailers to collect state sales tax, South Dakota v. Wayfair, meant a sustained infusion of cash headed to state coffers.

Federal expansion of unemployment benefits, first through the $2.2 trillion CARES Act signed by then-President Trump and then again through President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, meant even the millions who were unemployed by the pandemic could keep spending.

“Sales tax was a surprise for many states because people, even those who lost their jobs, were still getting unemployment insurance and they could still spend money,” said Lucy Dadayan, a senior researcher at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center who specializes in state budgets. “If the pandemic-induced recession happened prior to Wayfair, the situation might have been very different but the online sales taxation helped a lot.”

Statehood

 Matt Glassman at Legislative Procedure:

The short answer is that Congress passes a federal law. The admission of new states is governed by Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution, which reads:

“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”

Although various detailed plans for structuring the statehood process were considered both before the adoption of the Constitution and as revisions to it in the 19th century, the Framers went with a plan that did not constitutionally constrain either the size of new states or set a population threshold required for admission. Nor did they require any supermajority procedures. In effect, they made it surprisingly easy to add new states. Creating a new state is arguably the only irreversible process in the entire Constitution. Yet, it requires no more than federal law to achieve it.

And it was immediately and always controversial. Throughout the 19th century, statehood played a prominent role in destabilizing American politics. New states' ability to alter the balance of political power in the federal government led to near-constant political jockeying over state admissions, as partisans sought to expand the Union as a mechanism of consolidating political power. Frustration with the process led to routine calls for its reform, especially for the imposition of size and population threshold restrictions on Congress's ability to add states.

Federalism and Minimum Wages

 Drew DeSilver at Pew:

Prospects for raising the federal minimum wage, which has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2009, appear to have stalled out yet again, despite broad public support for the idea. In truth, though, for the past several years most of the real action on minimum wages has been in states, counties and cities, not on Capitol Hill. Just this past November, for example, Florida voters approved Amendment 2, which will gradually raise the state’s minimum until it reaches $15 in 2026.

As a practical matter, the $7.25 federal minimum wage is actually used in just 21 states, which collectively account for about 40% of all U.S. wage and salary workers – roughly 56.5 million people – according to our analysis of state minimum-wage laws and federal employment data. In the 29 other states and the District of Columbia, minimum wages are higher – ranging from $8.65 in Florida to $15 in D.C.

In eight of the states with higher-than-federal minimum wages, some cities and counties have adopted local ordinances that provide for even higher rates than their state’s minimum, accelerate schedules for future increases, or both. (None of the states where the $7.25 federal minimum prevails have higher local minimums.) Our research found at least 46 such cities and counties – most of them (36) in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas of California. The highest local minimum wage in the country, $16.84, is in Emeryville, a suburb of San Francisco.

State Government Finance

 Many posts have discussed state government and public finance.

#DYK that in 2019, public welfare exceeded education as the largest state expenditure for the first time since 1942?

Download our summary of the 2019 Annual Survey of #StateGovernment Finances to learn more: https://t.co/f3lkXqr7qg pic.twitter.com/RKcOn7hHHl

— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) December 16, 2020