As 2024 arrives, many Americans will benefit from pay increases as 22 states will enact minimum wage increases. New Jersey and Delaware’s minimum wages will go up to $15.13 and $13.25 respectively. Pennsylvania is not among these 22 states, and our minimum wage languishes at a woeful $7.25 per hour. But our state legislators - those who determine our state minimum wage - will benefit from an automatic pay increase of 3.5% to more than $106,000, the largest pay increase since 1995. Our legislators reap the benefits of yearly wage increases while the state minimum wage has remained unchanged for 15 years. Our state legislators’ increasingly generous pay (it is the third highest in the country) does not equal tasks completed or jobs well done. Fewer than 80 bills made it to the governor’s desk, roughly half of the annual output of previous years. A Democrat-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate has led to too much impasse, too much stone-walling, too much political grandstanding. It does not help when a House measure to raise the minimum wage to $15 is labeled “unreasonable” by Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman. It does not help that seemingly slam-dunk partisan legislation, something even as simple as changing Pennsylvania’s primary date, is doomed thanks to “poison pill” amendments that are added to make the measures unpalatable to the other party, and thus unpassable. My tax dollars not at work. It is tough to witness these well-paid, out-of-touch legislators promote their own politics over a bipartisanship that would promote the people of Pennsylvania. Almost nothing gets done, but not to worry; that lack of progress does not prevent these legislators from happily pocketing their not-so-well earned, yearly reliably increased lucre.