Best 64 quotes in «minimum wage quotes» category

Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment.

Raising the federal minimum wage won't just put more money in the pocket of low-income families - it also means they spend more money at the businesses in their neighborhoods. [Donald] Trump's against that as well.

The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.

Raising the minimum wage a lot across the board would make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it's an indispensable part of solving the problem.

Raising the minimum wage, as President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address, tends to be more popular with the general public than with economists.

Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax. If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness.

The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.

The internal and external ethics of an organization must be the same; you cannot talk about minimum wages for poor people and not pay minimum wages to your own workers.

The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box.

Taking the politics out of setting the minimum wage provides fairness for workers and predictability for businesses. This legislation will also protect the most vulnerable workers and level the playing field for employers who play by the rules. These are the right steps to take; they will make Ontario a better place to work and run a business.

The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie - but only if she is paid the minimum wage.

The minimum wage was due for an increase, but it was important that we offset its cost to small businesses.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

This is a sensible response to employer concerns that the minimum wage is starting to have a damaging impact on competitiveness.

The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner - most likely a woman - responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children.

We should raise the national minimum wage.

Unlike side issues like unemployment, unions, and minimum-wage laws, the subject of work itself is almost entirely absent from libertarian literature. Most of what little there is consists of Randite rantings against parasites, barely distinguishable from the invective inflicted on dissidents by the Soviet press.

We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live in poverty

What is the source of power of musicians who are financially browbeaten, most of whom work for minimum wage or less? Musicians who cannot even afford to buy tickets to operas or concerts in which they themselves perform?

We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.

What we need to do is raise the minimum wage. We also need to hold onto equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America.

A person's right to a job is as specious as his boss' right to success in business. There is no right to a minimum wage, just as there is no right to success in self-employment.

We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage.

When I was a student at Princeton University, I was working part time in a grocery store. I saw an ad for teachers of a prep course. I don't remember what it paid, but it was easily double or triple the minimum wage.

You get paid more at McDonald's than you do under the existing minimum wage.

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person-a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief-you may begin to feel less trust worthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. To draw for a moment from an entirely different corner of my life, that part of me still attached to the biological sciences, there is ample evidence that animals-rats and monkeys, for example-that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming "depressed" in humanlike ways. Their behavior is anxious and withdrawn; the level of serotonin (the neurotransmitter boosted by some antidepressants) declines in their brains. And-what is especially relevant here-they avoid fighting even in self-defense. Humans are, of course, vastly more complicated; even in situations of extreme subordination, we can pump up our self-esteem with thoughts of our families, our religion, our hopes for the future. But as much as any other social animal, and more so than many, we depend for our self-image on the humans immediately around us-to the point of altering our perceptions of the world so as to fit in with theirs. My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers - the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being "reamed out" by managers - are part of what keeps wages low. If you're made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you're paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done.

Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate. 42 It is a word that speaks to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets. Boosting poor people’s incomes by increasing the minimum wage or public benefits, say, is absolutely crucial. But not all of those extra dollars will stay in the pockets of the poor. Wage hikes are tempered if rents rise along with them, just as food stamps are worth less if groceries in the inner city cost more—and they do, as much as 40 percent more, by one estimate. 43 Poverty is two-faced—a matter of income and expenses, input and output—and in a world of exploitation, it will not be effectively ameliorated if we ignore this plain fact.

Sometimes one has to be humble enough to start at the bottom with a minimum-wage job even if you have a college degree. Once you get your foot in the door, you can prove your worth and rapidly move up the ladder. If you never get in the door, it is unlikely that you will rise to the top.

Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Inequalities at the bottom of the US wage distribution have closely followed the evolution of thee minimum wage: the gap between the bottom 10 percent of the wage distribution and the overall average wage widened significantly in the 1980s, then narrowed in the 1990s, and finally increased again in the 2000s. Nevertheless, inequalities at the top of the distribution - for example, the share of total wages going to the top 10 percent -- increased steadily throughout this period. Clearly, the minimum wage has an impact at the bottom of the distribution but much less influence at the top, where other forces are at work.

When you think of the amount of turnover and profit made by most companies in this country - and especially the big chains, it's a shame that they pay their employees minimum wage and no more than that. What that really says is: 'We're paying you minimum wage, because we're not allowed to pay you any less.

That left Jeb to work for whatever the bosses offered under the National Right to Work Act--the minimum wage having been abolished--enough to keep them fed and the car gassed but not enough for a roof or to save much more than coins.

The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake is an inane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions. Upon the basis of the wages system the value of labouring power is settled like that of every other commodity; and as different kinds of labouring power have different values, or require different quantities of labour for their production, they must fetch different prices in the labour market. To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production? After what has been said, it will be seen that the value of labouring power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power.

To all you who believe we shouldn't have a minimum wage -- that the minimum amount you can be paid should be determined solely by your employer. We tried it once before: it was called SLAVERY.

Anyone who supported Bernie Sanders who thinks we should raise the minimum wage, who thinks that we should have universal health care coverage, who thinks that the wealthy have not paid their fair share, and I could go on and on, would certainly not find that Donald Trump's views are in line with theirs.

A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.

Anyone who's tried to pay a heating bill, fill a prescription, or simply buy groceries knows all too well that the current minimum wage does not cut the mustard.

The eugenics roots of minimum wage laws. Excerpt from *Principles of Economics*(1911) by Frank Taussig: "We have not reached the stage where we can proceed to chloroform them once and for all; but at least they can be segregated, shut up in refuges and asylums, and prevented from propagating their kind.... What are the possibilities of employing at the prescribed wages all the healthy able-bodied who apply? The persons affected by such legislation would be those in the lowest economic and social group. The wages at which they can find employment depend on the prices at which their product will sell in the market; or in the technical language of modern economics, on the marginal utility of their services. All those whose additional product would so depress prices that the minimum could no longer be paid by employers would have to go without employment. It might be practicable to prevent employers from paying any one less than the minimum; though the power of law must be very strong indeed, and very rigidly exercised, in order to prevent the making of bargains which are welcome to both bargainers.

But can we please stop insisting that if low-wage workers earn a little bit more, unemployment will skyrocket and the economy will collapse? There is no evidence for it. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.

I first came into the labor force in 1941 when the minimum wage was 40 cents an hour, and that was my first job. And each time that we've tried to boost the lower level of salary for the most underpaid workers, there have been predictions of catastrophe. But each time, in [m]y opinion, the change has helped our Nation and its economic strength.

Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition.

If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine.

Giving a minimum wage reduces inequality significantly.

If you want to be backed by corporations so that you're elected mayor, then it's going to be very problematic for you to support a living wage campaign that would shift the minimum wage to something else.

I believe in raising the minimum wage and equal pay for work.

If you're fighting against a minimum wage increase, you're fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage.