American state legislators are absurdly underpaid

(Image credit: iStock)

Today I learned, via the journalist John Fleck, that the New Mexican state legislature is not paid. As in, at all. Wondering what the general case was, Jake Grovum pointed me to this handy tool he constructed. It turns out that while New Mexico is at the absolute bottom, most states are barely better. West Virginia, at about the median, pays just $20,000.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.