by Senator John S. Edwards, 21st Senate District of Virginia
Income inequality is greater today than since the 1920s and this disparity is widening. What is worse is the stagnation in wages of those at the lowest end of the wage scale.
Since the 1970s real wages for the bottom 50% of workers have stayed the same or fallen, while the top 1% have enjoyed a nearly 400% increase in income. Astoundingly, almost 50 years ago, the minimum wage was higher than today adjusted for inflation. The Republican Congress has refused to adjust the minimum wage since 2009.
Working full time year round at minimum wage a worker today would make only $15,080 per year. This is less than the federal poverty level of a family of four which is $24,250 per year. Obviously, this level of income is inadequate to support a family.
No one working full time should be forced to live in poverty!
Some 29 states and the District of Columbia have adjusted the minimum wage due to the recognition that the minimum wage today is not enough to lift the family of a full time worker out of poverty.
Virginia lags states like West Virginia (minimum wage of $8.00 per hour) and Maryland (minimum wage $8.25), and the District of Columbia which has minimum wage of $10.50 per hour.
Well over half of minimum wage workers are women, including a large number of single mothers providing for their families. The average annual cost of child care for just one child amounts to more than half the annual income of a minimum wage worker.
Not only would higher wages help pull families out of poverty, but higher wages would enable families to purchase health insurance.
Because low wage workers spend nearly all their income, raising the minimum wage would benefit the overall economy. According to the Chicago Federal Reserve System, raising the wage would increase GDP by .3% in the short run.
Businesses also would benefit by improving motivation and productivity and causing less absenteeism and extra costs of recruiting and training to replace workers. That is why a number of large employers have recently increased their starting wages.
It is time Virginia joins the 29 other states and D.C. and raises the minimum wage to help families pull themselves out of poverty.
This year Senate Bill 681 would have raise the minimum wage to a modest $8.00 in 2015, $9.00 in 2016, and $10.10 in 2017, but it was defeated in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee by the Republican majority.
Over eighty years ago President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking at the opening of the Salem VA Hospital, commented: “we must do first things first. The care of the disabled, the sick, the destitute and the starving in all ranks of our population – that, my friends, is the first thing.”
We should follow this advice and put “first things first” and help working families by raising the minimum wage.
