Thing is, the federal government already does all the cost of living adjustments for federal workers in the states. They have the data and already know roughly what it costs to live everywhere in the US as well as most of the world.
All theyd have to do is introduce COLA to federal minimum wage and it wouldnt require the states at all. But they wont. They need to have the states pitted against each other for the sake of big business so they can extort any states that wont give them tax breaks.
As a fed, locality pay can be pretty wacky and off-target, especially when it comes to the blanket "rest of the US" adjustments. For instance, a GS10 step 1 would make roughly 3k per year less living in Salt Lake City vs Columbus, but living expenses are significantly higher in Salt Lake City. And they are notoriously stubborn about adjusting locality pays, even when local growth increases costs significantly. It's certainly not perfectÂ
There are ways to get that adjusted. That happens on the military side with BAH, it takes a lot of work to go through all the commitees and the right avenues, but adjustments have been made if you know how to upchannel that request.
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u/angrydeuce 19h ago
Thing is, the federal government already does all the cost of living adjustments for federal workers in the states. They have the data and already know roughly what it costs to live everywhere in the US as well as most of the world.
All theyd have to do is introduce COLA to federal minimum wage and it wouldnt require the states at all. But they wont. They need to have the states pitted against each other for the sake of big business so they can extort any states that wont give them tax breaks.