In the 75 years since it was introduced, Americans have been arguing over the minimum wage.
Some say government intervention to artificially raise wages lowers demand for workers and interferes with economic freedom — preventing people who would be willing to work for less from getting jobs at all. They argue that the minimum wage especially hurts teenagers and young adults with few or no skills.
More From The Debate
In the 75 years since it was introduced, Americans have been arguing over the minimum wage.
Some say government intervention to artificially raise wages lowers demand for workers and interferes with economic freedom — preventing people who would be willing to work for less from getting jobs at all. They argue that the minimum wage especially hurts teenagers and young adults with few or no skills.
More From The Debate
On Election Day 2012, black voters waited on average nearly twice as long to vote as did white voters, while the wait time for Hispanic voters fell in between those two groups.
So say the available data, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Charles Stewart III. He decided to see what he could learn by examining statistics on Election Day waits and sums up his findings in a research paper titled "Waiting to Vote in 2012."
Stewart says the national average wait for white voters was 12 minutes, while that same metric for African-Americans was 23 minutes. For Hispanics, it was 19 minutes.
Although it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that some form of discrimination might have been at work, Stewart suggests that other factors could be at play, such as geography.
The data, for instance, indicate that waits tended to be longest in cities and shortest in rural ZIP codes as a general rule, though there were exceptions. Stewart writes:
"On the whole, states with the smallest populations had the lowest waits. This is related to the fact that rural areas had the shortest wait times and cities had the longest. Among respondents living in the most rural ZIP codes in the study, the overall national average wait was 5.7 minutes; among those living in the most densely populated ZIP codes, the average wait was 17.7 minutes.
"However, it should be noted that California had among the shortest wait times in the country, at an average of 7 minutes; Los Angeles County, the largest electoral jurisdiction in the nation, also averaged 7 minutes to vote. Thus, while large, urban areas may be prone to longer lines, they are not destined to have them."
British Prime Minister David Cameron's office announced Tuesday morning that "Lady Thatcher's funeral service will take place on Wednesday, 17 April 2013 at St Paul's Cathedral."
The "Iron Lady" — former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — died Monday in London following a stroke. She was 87.
According to the BBC, the funeral ceremony will include "full military honors." Both Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, plan to attend. It will be a "ceremonial" service like those held for Princess Diana and the Queen Mother in recent decades. That's "one rung down from a state funeral," the BBC adds.
According to USA Today, state funerals are normally "reserved for members of the royal family ... [though] the last state funeral held in the United Kingdom was in 1965 following the death of Sir Winston Churchill."
Thatcher was a controversial leader. During her 11 years as prime minister (1979-90) she teamed with President Reagan to stand up against communism. But she also broke Britain's trade union movement — angering many — and led her nation into a short war with Argentina over the Falklands.
There were some arrests and injuries at "celebrations" of her death Monday night in Britain, the BBC says.
Some of our earlier coverage:
— Margaret Thatcher: A Remembrance
— 5 Things To Know About Margaret Thatcher
— Britain's Thatcher An Unlikely Icon For American Conservatives
— Thatcher Authorized A Posthumous Biography