The Ghost of Census' Yet to Come Predicts West Virginia Loses a Congressional Seat

Most people know about the three spirits in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Dickens is a stubborn and self-destructive man on many levels.  To save him from a miserable, lonely death, the spirits come to offer what later gets called "tough love."

Those who just flew in from the moon and are unfamiliar with the plot can check this out.

The Washington Post this week played the part of the grim Ghost of Census Yet to Come.  It projected that by 2060, West Virginia, among other states, will relatively or absolutely decline in population to the point that it will lose another seat in Congress.

Ebeneezer Scrooge asked the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, when showed his miserable fate of dying alone, if these were events fated or changeable.  The Ghost grimly refused to reply.

Scrooge did not accept his possible fate.  he changed his ways.  So ought West Virginia.  Experts know what builds development, productivity, wealth, and population.  Reform the court system, weed out unnecessary regulations, licenses, and fee requirements, resist the temptation to raise the minimum wage, enact fair tax practices for all rather than special deals for a few.

The question is, will West Virginia enact these measures or drift down the road to irrelevance in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College?

The Gate Test

A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear a speech by Chuck Kinder of the States Auditors Office. During his speech he spoke about the “Gate test.” Basically the test is, if you want to see how your government and economy is doing, you open the gate and see which way the people go.

As a nation, the US is doing quite well on the gate test. In fact they don’t even bother to use the gate on the southern border to get into the nation, any hole in the fence will do. This is a direct reflection on the economic opportunity available in the US. It is people’s nature to want to go where they have greater opportunity to make a better life for themselves and for a large portion of the world that place is the US. The grade for the gate test can be found in the census data. In 1950 the US population was 150 million persons and last year the US population passed the 300 million mark. In a little less than 60 years the nation has doubled. The US has earned stellar grade in the gate test.

West Virginia on the other hand has failed the gate test. In 1950 the population of West Virginia was 2 million. In 1950 we made up 1.3% of the US population. Today there are about 1.8 million West Virginians, 200,000 less than there were in 1950. That number is deceiving. On the surface it appears to be a loss of only 200,000, but today West Virginia only makes up 0.6% of the US population. If West Virginia maintained 1.3% of the US population as we did in 1950, then today there would be around 3.9 million of us. That means in less than 60 years 2.1 million “would be” West Virginian’s went missing. West Virginia’s gates are open and over half left for better economic opportunity elsewhere. That goes far beyond a failing grade.

The loss of population is more than just numbers. We all have family and friends that have had to leave to find opportunity for a better life elsewhere, breaking up the extended family structure that is a corner stone of Appalachian life. The states power in Washington has been cut in half as we only send 3 people to the US House of Representatives every two years, where in 1950 we sent 6. The burden of taxes has increased on all of us and the load is spread over fewer and fewer people. We are all feeling the effects.

We have two options as I see it. The first is to expand the West Virginia government to build a wall like the former East Germany and close the gate to prevent the people from leaving for better economic opportunity. History tells us how that will turn out. The East German government collapsed and Germany reunified. Now with Virginia being ranked at the top in economic opportunity, some may consider reunification a good thing for West Virginia.

I prefer the second option; let’s make the changes necessary to bring economic opportunity back to West Virginia. We need to make our side of the gate more attractive than the other side of the gate. Russell Sobel and his group have developed a blueprint to make that happen if we choose to make the changes. It is human nature to resist change, because change is uncomfortable and there is a fear of the unknown. I once heard insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We must overcome that fear and make the changes or we will continue to get the same result.

Over the gate to West Virginia hangs a sign that reads “Open for Business,” but when you are going through the gate for better opportunity you only see the blank backside. It is time for a change.

2 Million People Reported Missing

This is just something to think about. In 1950 West Virginia had a population of 2,005,552; in 2000 the population was 1,808,344. I know that only works out to a loss of 197,208 persons over those 50 years, but that is not the whole story.

In 2000 there were 1,941,345 less West Virginians than there should have been had we kept pace with the rest of the United States, in 2010 the estimate shows there will be 2,287,148 less than what there should.

Since 1950, compared to the rest of the nation, West Virginia has been more than cut in half in population and power. In 1950 we had 6 congressmen, now we have 3. This is what happens when you rank last in all of the good categories, and first in all of the bad categories.
During this time there has been one constant. One political party has held power in Charleston, churning out the same bad policies year after year. At some point you have to ask; since this hasn’t worked for the last 57 years, why should it work in the 58th year? How bad does it have to get before we are willing to demand a change?

The Tripping Point

In the Spring 2007 issue of Capacity Magazine, Congressman Alan Mollohan wrote an article entitled West Virginia’s Economy, has reached the all-important ‘tipping point.’ The congressman states, “In any complex system, a tipping point-that moment when an accumulation of small, easily overlooked changes creates a sudden shift in the dynamics of the overall system-is often hard to see coming but blindingly obvious in retrospect.” I’ll agree with the congressman on the definition of ‘tipping point,’ but will strongly disagree that we are even close to one in the West Virginia Economy.

Those small easily overlooked changes can make a difference in the states economy, but not when you ignore the huge ones staring you in the face. We need judicial reform to prevent the frivolous lawsuits. We need cut our business taxes from the 7th highest in the nation. We need to lower the states workman’s comp rates and we need to streamline the environmental permits process. All of these items combine to make it expensive to do business in West Virginia, and many businesses believe it to expensive, so they go elsewhere.

We need to look back to the ‘tripping point.’ That is the moment when we began to fall, and that was the 1950’s. In the 1950’s West Virginia had a strong economy and a population of 2 million. The blindingly obvious retrospective is; at that time our legal system was fair, we had low corporate taxes, and easy permitting processes for all kinds of businesses. There is no rocket science here, businesses need low cost of operation to be competitive. Those cost rose in West Virginia from the 1950’s forward and the businesses left to areas with lower cost to remain competitive.

That population of 2 million in 1950 is now down to 1.8 million. People see us loosing 200,000 in population from 1950 to present, but that is not an accurate analysis of the data. In 1950 the US population was 154 million; today the US population is 300 million. If West Virginia had experienced the same growth rate the US did then West Virginia’s population would be 3.8 million. That is 2 million missing West Virginians not contributing to the West Virginia economy. It is time we learn from the mistakes of the past 50 plus years, and make the big fixes that will give us a true tipping point.