Poll: Less than half of millionaires support hiking minimum wage

Just under half of the millionaires surveyed in a new poll say they support an increase in the minimum wage.

Forty-nine percent of Americans with $1 million or more in assets said they back hiking the federal minimum wage, in the Wealth and Values survey published Tuesday by PNC Bank. Thirty percent said they opposed raising the rate, while 21 percent declined to either support or oppose a wage change.

{mosads}The 49 percent mark is much less than the support for raising the minimum wage among all Americans in other polls.

Earlier this month, left-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that a majority of voters in battleground Senate states — including Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Wisconsin — support increasing the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, and Democrats have pushed to raise it to $10.10. Conservative lawmakers, though, oppose a hike, warning that it could hit small businesses and cost jobs in the recovering economy.

In the PNC survey, a majority at 69 percent said they supported charities to target poverty and hunger and 64 percent said they supported scholarships and educational opportunities for lower income children.

Raising taxes the wealthy had much less support among the surveyed millionaires at 44 percent.

The survey also found that most millionaires don’t open their wallets for politicians, either. Only 31 percent of millionaires — or three in 10 millionaires — donated to a politician or a political party in the past year, according to the survey. The poll did not ask about contributions to political action committees.

In contrast, the survey found that 84 percent of millionaires had donated money to a non-profit organization in the past year.

The poll interviewed 476 millionaires between Aug. 22 and Sept. 13. It has a 4.5 percent margin of error.