Minimum Wage Quotes - Page 9

• On the basis of capitalism, victories like raising the minimum wage are only temporary.

  Kshama Sawant

  Victory, Bases, Capitalism

  Source: www.socialistalternative.org

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• You [Jill Stein] also believe in a full employment policy that was the majority Democratic Party policy in 1946. They actually passed a law to that effect. You want to end poverty and when people see how relatively easy it is to end poverty. And one way is to increase the minimum wage: catch up; it's been frozen for so many years.

  Ralph Nader

  Party, Believe, Years

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• Fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage. That was one of the reasons why so many people flocked to Bernie Sanders candidacy.

  Ralph Nader

  People, Dollars, Fifteen

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.

  Barack Obama

  Impact, Design, Childhood

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• An economic message, an economic platform unites the factory worker in Scranton, the young woman in Los Angeles struggling to pay her college debt and the single mom in Buffalo who's on minimum wage.

  Charles Schumer

  Mom, Struggle, College

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Rent control is one policy that economists universally would oppose. It is a grossly inefficient way of allocating housing space and, of course, it inhibits construction and creates the very thing it is supposed to alleviate. It is one of those things where people simply don't understand simple economics and, therefore, put in for political reasons what will damage the very people that it is designed to help. Minimum wage levels are another classic example.

  James M. Buchanan

  Simple, Space, People

  Source: www.aims.ca

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• Bernie Sanders did not wake up last night with this great idea that we should guarantee health care to all people as a right. Actually, it exists in every other major country on earth. You don't know that, because the media has forgotten to tell you that. But it does exist. In Denmark, because of union negotiations, the minimum wage is about $20 an hour. In Germany, you go to college tuition-free. In Finland, they actually pay you to go to college. Now, you don't know that in America because CBS forgot to tell you. But that is the reality.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Night, Reality

  Source: billmoyers.com

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• If you are a Jewish Israeli, you go to Gaza, you get the villa of your life, the villa which you did not dream of ever getting in Israel, a beautiful two-story villa with green meadows and so on, practically for nothing. Then you put up hothouses of tomatoes or flowers; you take the very Arabs from whom you grabbed this land and employ them as laborers in your hothouses. Israeli law does not apply in Gaza: There is no minimum wage, no annual vacation, no compensation for dismissal - so you get the work very, very cheap. It is a wonderful setup economically.

  Uri Avnery

  Beautiful, Dream, Flower

  Source: progressive.org

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• The Republicans believe in the minimum wage -- the more the minimum, the better.

  Harry S. Truman

  Believe, Political, Republican

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• Clockers" asks--almost in passing, and there's a lot more to it than this--a pretty interesting question: if you choose to work for the minimum wage when everyone around you is pocketing thousands from drug deals, then what does that do to you, to your head and to your heart? (Hornby's thoughts after reading "Clockers" by Richard Price)

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Heart, Interesting

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• Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Encouragement, Jobs, School

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, Zero, Real

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• Raising the minimum wage and lowering the barriers to union organization would carry a trade-off - higher unemployment. A better idea is to have the government subsidize low-wage employment. The earned-income tax credit for low-income workers - which has been the object of proposed cuts by both President Clinton and congressional Republicans - has been a positive step in this direction.

  Paul Krugman

  Philosophy, Cutting, Government

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• Why, when the economist gives advice to his society, is he so often cooly ignored? He never ceases to preach free trade, and protectionism is growing in the United States. He deplores the perverse effects of minimum wage laws, and the legal minimum is regularly raised each 3 or 5 years. He brands usury laws as a medieval superstition, but no state hurries to repeal its law.

  George Stigler

  Philosophy, Years, Law

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• I think that if it is - has to do with global warming, or if it has to do with raising the minimum wage, or if it has to do with lowering prescription drugs for vulnerable citizens - all of those things are people issues, not Democratic issues or Republican issues.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Thinking, Issues, People

  "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, www.nbcnews.com. November 25.

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• But I also want to give them a pathway so that they can earn citizenship, earn a legal status, start learning English, pay a significant fine, go to the back of the line, but they can then stay here and they can have the ability to enforce a minimum wage that they're paid, make sure the worker safety laws are available, make sure that they can join a union.

  Barack Obama

  Law, Safety, Giving

  "Transcript: NPR Democratic Candidates' Debate". www.npr.org. December 4, 2007.

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• Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.

  Jacques Ellul

  Growing Up, Class, Numbers

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• Teddy Kennedy's big new idea is to wheel out his 18th proposal to raise the minimum wage. He's been doing this since wages were paid in Spanish doubloons (which coincidentally are now mostly found underwater). Kennedy refuses to countenance any risky schemes like trying to grow the economy so people making minimum wage get raises because they've been promoted. Kennedy's going down and he's taking the party with him! (Recognize the pattern?)

  Ann Coulter

  Party, Ideas, People

  "Come back, liberals!". www.anncoulter.com. March 9, 2005.

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• Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist.

  Tom DeLay

  Emotional, Trying, Hours

  Congressional Record, Volume 142, No.53, April 23, 1996.

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• On issue after issue, the polls - and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time - show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right.

  Katrina vanden Heuvel

  Country, Health, Cutting

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• I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence.

  Walter E. Williams

  Kings, Law, People

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• I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I've seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, Climate, Hamburgers

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• I live in the same house I purchased in 1971 for $22,500. I think we need to increase the minimum wage and so all my neighbors can get an increase in their wages.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Thinking, House, Needs

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• I worked at McDonald's. I cooked. It was one of the toughest jobs I've ever had. These people earn every single penny they get. In fact, they earn way more than they get.

  Keith Ellison

  Jobs, Mcdonalds, People

  "Pols back #FastFoodStrikes" by Jose Delreal, www.politico.com. December 05, 2013.

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• I think the minimum wage will be the centerpiece of the State of Union. I think it should be the centerpiece of the State of the Union. And it should be very focused on that because, as you said, Republicans in the rest of the country are for it.

  Robert Gibbs

  Country, Thinking, Political

  "Gibbs advice: Slim down '14 agenda" by Tal Kopan, www.politico.com. December 11, 2013.

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