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Washington raised the minimum wage in 1998 linking it to inflation. In the 15 years that followed, the state's minimum wage climbed to $9.32 - highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington's restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years

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A Los Angeles City Council committee voted unanimously to authorize a study on nearly doubling the minimum wage for employees of large hotels in the nation's second-largest city. The L.A. proposal is one of several municipal moves toward raising wages well above the 5-year-old federal rate of $7.25; at $15.37, it would set a local hotel industry wage floor far beyond the $10.10 proposed by congressional Democrats.

Make the case for what is right – and do it fearlessly, because it is right. When the time for expediency arrives, you may find that the limits of the possible have changed.

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