Minimum Wage Quotes

• The real minimum wage is zero.

  Thomas Sowell

  Zero, Real, Minimum

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.55, Hoover Press

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• The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.

  Milton Friedman

  Hurt, Real, Law

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• If I thought that raising the minimum wage was the best way to help people increase their pay, I would be all for it, but it isn't. If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine. And that means all this automation that's replacing jobs and people is only going to be accelerated.

  Marco Rubio

  Jobs, Mean, People

  "Texas Indictments; Plane Crash Investigation; Republican Debate". "CNN Newsroom", www.cnn.com. November 11, 2015.

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• Raising minimum wage doesn't just benefit the workers behind me, it creates a proven ripple effect that increases wages all the way up the scale. ... Let's get the facts straight, only 20 percent of people making the minimum wage are teenagers. The rest are hardworking adults, many of them with families, and I mean hardworking.

  Joe Biden

  Teenager, Mean, People

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• The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs. This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy.

  Jerry Brown

  Struggle, Political, Cost

  "Governor Brown, Senate President pro Tempore and Assembly Speaker Support Raising California’s Minimum Wage". www.gov.ca.gov. September 11, 2013.

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• Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.

  Ron Paul

  Opportunity, Employment, Increase

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• The minimum wage is something that F.D.R. put in place a long time ago during the Great Depression. I don't think it worked then. It didn't solve any problems then and it hasn't solved any problems in 50 years.

  John Raese

  Thinking, Years, Long

  "WV Senate Candidate John Raese: I "Absolutely" Want to Abolish Minimum Wage". ABC News, October 12, 2010.

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

  Bernie Sanders

  Jobs, Poverty, Should

  FaceBook post by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Sep 25, 2013

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• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Money, Economic Inequality, History

  Second Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1937

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• 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.

  Bill Pascrell

  Tanks, Half, Pay

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• When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it. Why do we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?

  John Boehner

  People, Political, Employment

  "What if there were no minimum wage?" by Bob Greene, www.cnn.com. February 24, 2013.

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

  Marco Rubio

  People, Machines, Raises

  Marco Rubio's speech at the Republican Presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, www.nytimes.com. November 11, 2015.

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• We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living-a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Immature, Age, Normal

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

  Murray Rothbard

  Jobs, Law, Remember

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• No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty.

  Jon Corzine

  Facts, Doe, Earning

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• Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it.

  Walter E. Williams

  Opportunity, Law, Employment

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• No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Mean, Labor Day

  Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

  Barack Obama

  Inspirational, Family, Retirement

  Daily Labor Report, Issues 169-189, Bureau of National Affairs, 2010.

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• Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him.

  Murray Rothbard

  Law, Doe, Unemployment

  "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto".

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• No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

  Benjamin Jealous

  Dream, Persons, American Dream

  "You Can’t Survive on $7.25" by Ben Jealous, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 15, 2013.

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• The minimum wage is not something that you want to stay on as a permanent basis. For example, if you have a minimum wage job, you don't stay there 20 or 30 years. You don't put your children through college working on minimum wage.

  John Raese

  Jobs, Children, College

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• In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Mean, Simple

  Franklin D. Roosevelt's statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs arent paying enough to keep families out of poverty

  Barbara Mikulski

  Country, Jobs, Poverty

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

  Norm Coleman

  Mcdonalds, Wages, Paid

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• Literally, if we took away the minimum wage - if conceivably it was gone - we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.

  Michele Bachmann

  Jobs, Unemployment, Gone

  "Michele Bachmann Said What?!" by Tim Murphy, www.motherjones.com. June 6, 2011.

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