Our snap poll of 100 random West Virginians in the Eastern Panhandle today found that fully 80 percent support raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.50 an hour – an amount that, as Ralph Nader puts it, would help us catch up with 1968. (Adjusted for inflation since 1968, the federal minimum wage would be $10.67 per hour.)
This poll result is similar to a recent Gallup poll showing 71 percent of Americans would vote to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour.
As for our ten members of the House of Delegates from the Eastern Panhandle, not one said yes to raising the minimum wage to keep up with 1968.
Not kidding.
Remember our civics lesson last week?
There are 100 members of the West Virginia House of Delegates.
Ten of them are from right here in the Eastern Panhandle.
They are: Daryl Cowles (R), Larry Kump (R), Eric Householder (R), Larry Faircloth (R), John Overington (R), Tiffany Lawrence (D), Stephen Skinner (D), Paul Espinosa (R), Michael Folk (R) and Jason Barrett (D).
We asked our ten delegates a simple question: Would you support legislation in West Virginia that would catch up to 1968 and adjust the minimum wage to $10.50 per hour?
Cowles did not answer.
Faircloth did not answer.
Overington did not answer.
Lawrence did not answer.
Skinner did not answer.
Espinosa did not answer.
Folk did not answer.
Barrett did not answer.
Compare this to the 100 Eastern Panhandle citizens I spoke with today — all of them answered. They said something. Yes (80 percent). Or no. Or I don’t have time now. Or get out of my face. But they answered.
Of our delegation, only two answered.
Kump answered with a resounding no.
“My tongue and cheek comment on this resolution, when we voted on the floor of the House of Delegates, was: ‘Let’s raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour, and then we’ll all make a good living.’”
“Government imposed wages do not create a single new job, and many economists agree that increasing minimum wages actually increases unemployment among those who make marginal salaries,” Kump said.
Householder also responded with a defiant no.
“Mandated minimum wage requirements hurt level/non skilled workers because fewer jobs are available,” Householder said. “In competitive markets, the imposition of a minimum wage provides a classic example of a government distortion that creates negative side effects in the marketplace.”
“The important thing to understand is that markets often respond to changes in mandated minimum wages in ways that create negative effects that are unplanned and are not desired by the general public usually because of higher prices.”
“The higher costs of wages will be passed on to someone in the long run — the only question is who. The important thing for my colleagues to remember in the WV Legislature is that a decision to increase the minimum wage is not cost-free — someone has to pay for it.”
Yeah, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart.
As a follow up, we asked both Householder and Kump whether they would eliminate the minimum wage entirely.
Neither answered this question.
Australia has a $16 an hour minimum wage and it is one of the more vibrant countries in the world. (For the third year in a row, Australia was named last month as the best place in the world to live and work, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.)
In any event, would someone help me out here?
How is it that 80 percent of West Virginians from the Eastern Panhandle support a raise in the minimum wage to $10.50 an hour while zero percent of their elected representatives to the House of Delegates do?