Top 235 Wage Quotes

6.6 million people will benefit from a rise in the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

You can’t expect a woman who’s holding down a part-time job to train for the biggest race in the world. She has to have a minimum wage, and I think it’s something that is pretty crazy that we don’t have that.

Mr. Speaker, the time for an increase in the minimum wage has not just arrived; it is long overdue.

Instead of focusing on this sort of defeatist mentality where we’ve gotta up the minimum wage, why don’t we focus on creating better-paying jobs?

Hopefully, 21 years later, Judge Roberts possesses an openness with respect to issues of gender-based wage discrimination.

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.

Why not add benefits for making healthy food choices, provide a transition bonus for getting off food stamps, or increase job training opportunities and income – raising minimum wage?

It does the American economy no long-term good to only keep the big box factories where we are now assembling ‘American’ products that are composed primarily of foreign components. We need to manufacture those components in a robust domestic supply chain that will spur job and wage growth.

I want to make sure that we have a tax code that makes sure that everyone benefits, including those in poverty and those middle-income wage earners and those that have already lived the American dream as well as making sure that everyone can receive the benefits of a robust economy and not just the select few.

How can I wage political battle against a widow who does not mean anyone any harm except only the president himself?

Superior and inferior wage one hundred battles a day.

Similarly, today, we do not know what will happen as we wage the War on Terror. We do know that we can count on the strong support from our closest ally and friend in the world in winning this war to secure our freedoms and the freedoms for all peoples throughout the world.

Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nominal wage cuts by workers.

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.

You know, I’ve got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake.

I wanted to be a team player, chipping in and earning my wage. There’s no other way for me.

Chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits, or workfare.

In Cambodia, education is really a luxury, and many kids are thrown into work as early as possible. This means they can help support their parents, as often the parents don’t even earn a living wage.

Retail employees are the underdogs or ‘Rudy’ of the work force. They start off at the bottom trying to gain experience, but rarely expect a good wage, a good experience or any career mobility. We need to change that mindset.

I was a waitress at a local pub. I was really bad with money and it taught me the value of it as I was on minimum wage.

I moved to London to work at the National Theatre and spent my first wage packet on Patti Smith, Bowie and Velvets records.

The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman’s aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.

Walmart is so huge that a wage boost at Walmart would ripple through the entire economy, putting more money in the pockets of low-wage workers. This would help boost the entire economy – including Walmart’s own sales.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Before the government decides to raise the minimum wage, it must consider the effects of the tax and benefits merry-go-round that affects the low-paid.

I would love for women to be focused on maximum wage, and I have fought to be recognized with equality for a long time.

I do not support a livable wage.

It is no small thing for an American to be able to go into a fast-food restaurant and to buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage – indeed, in the long sweep of history, this represents a remarkable achievement.

Thousands of Ohio families are going deeper and deeper in debt just trying to pay their heating bills, fill prescriptions, and buy groceries. The current minimum wage is simply not enough.

Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can’t expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.

When we talk about the minimum wage, we have to ask ourselves what it is that we owe both our workers and employers. I think clearly we owe them fairness.

Feeling the pressure to find a job or make the wage we earn go as far as we need it to? That’s totally relatable. Nearly all my pals, and definitely myself, have been in that situation. It’s no fun.

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.

My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.

It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the ‘L’ag Beomer.’ They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.

Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.

When it comes to discrimination, Americans pride ourselves on how far we’ve come. Racial segregation is history. Explicit sex discrimination is banned. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But amidst all the progress, the male-female wage gap persists, and it’s big.

We deserve quality jobs that pay a living wage, lower college tuition, action on climate change, and comprehensive immigration reform.

I am quite uncomfortable using legislation to peg the minimum wage.

Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages – below the poverty line for a family of two. That’s unacceptable.

Establishing a ‘livable wage’ floor would immediately reduce the gap in average pay between American women and men.

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.

An increase in the relative price of products from the low wage manufacturers in Asia and Latin America will also make those products less attractive to American consumers.

The NHS was hard to deliver, so was the minimum wage. It’s time now – we need to have a proper conversation about how much is the individual cost, how much is the burden that we’re all going to share together, and how much are we going to put on older adults now versus a future system like national insurance.

Wage theft, worker rights and workplace discrimination should not be swept under the rug. The United States cannot have a functional economy where all the gains go to the corporate class while all the pain goes to regular workers.

There’s nothing normal about graduating with massive student debt, where you live in fear of predatory debt collectors and wage garnishers even as you are starting to live your life.

Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.

If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in America.

At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line.

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

When mothers earn their fair share, young children have greater access to quality health care, educational opportunities, and safe communities. By ending the wage gap, we will help ensure that every child can achieve his or her God-given potential.

It’s never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to – economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.

For many young people, the minimum wage is a stepping stone to higher employment levels.

Workers want to be paid an honest, fair wage for the work they do. They want to be able to provide for their families by being justly compensated for their part in helping grow the U.S. economy. They deserve to be able to put food on the table and receive health care and other benefits.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren’t paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more.

Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so that American products, not jobs, are our number one export.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

I am essentially someone who comes from the theatre. I love the theatre. Unfortunately, theatre doesn’t pay the bills. Only in theatre abroad, I get a wage.

What I want to do is create jobs that make the minimum wage irrelevant.

Gender-based job restrictions tend to be associated with wider wage gaps and lower employment rates for women. And where girls’ future earning potential is limited, families may choose to send their brothers to school instead.

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.

Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit.

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.

Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a ‘leisure gap’ between them at home. Most women work one shift in the office or factory and a ‘second shift’ at home.

Nine years ago on September 14, 2001, I placed the lone vote against the ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force’ – an authorization that I knew would provide a blank check to wage war anywhere, at any time, and for any length.

On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We’ve got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers – and there could be a lot of them – will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.

European centralism, European statism, the communitization of sovereign debt, a Europeanization of social systems and of the minimum wage would be the wrong way.

I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage.

In passing the National Minimum Wage Act in 1998, the then-Labour Government did more than just establish the legal right to a minimum wage, significant as that was. More importantly, the Act made non-compliance a criminal offence.

I’ve been out of work myself and hated it. Any work, even on a minimum wage, is better than none.

My goal is to show girls that I’m fighting so they don’t have to, so they don’t have to fight the same battles, so they don’t have to fight for wage equality or whatever it may be.

Plain and simple, Congress must act to meet the needs of our constituents. We can do that by strengthening families, increasing the minimum wage, and ensuring equal pay for equal work.

Donald Trump has shown no interest in working toward increasing the minimum wage, no interest in doing anything but immigrant baiting, no interest in doing anything but filling the swamp with a band of billionaires who are simply trying to help the wealthy.

The stagflation of the 1970s blessed us with damaging wage and price controls and the utterly counterintuitive supply-side notion – famously drawn on a napkin – that cutting taxes would lead to higher tax revenues.

Prosecutors and public defenders deserve to make a living wage.

The American people are much more practical than Republican lawmakers on equal pay, on the minimum wage, on same-sex marriage, and on basic civil rights.

The current minimum wage simply is not supporting Ohio’s working families.

I’m looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can’t do the things that matter most to me. It’s when someone comes and says, ‘I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.’

Stopping new illegal immigration – preventing the effects that will have on our schools, on our hospitals, on our welfare system, on our wage earners – will save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

If cheap immigrant labor is made unavailable, employers can hire Americans at a higher wage, or replace low-wage immigrant workers with technology and automation, which will create a smaller number of skilled jobs for Americans.

Walmart’s period of explosive growth coincided with decades of wage stagnation and deindustrialization. By applying relentless downward pressure on prices and wages, the company came to dominate both consumer spending and employment in small towns and rural areas across the middle of the country.

Improving the outlook for U.S workers isn’t about creating millions of minimum-wage jobs. It is about creating sustainable, skilled employment that allows Americans to earn a fair wage with benefits that allows them to pay for housing and food on the table and sustain a middle-class lifestyle.

I will advocate moving the Illinois minimum wage back to the national minimum wage.

If you look at the future of the Democratic Party, things like raising the minimum wage – Democrats need to get behind raising the minimum wage and be clear on where we stand on trade deals.

There’s enormous progressive activism and, more often than not, success at the grassroots level – everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.

Free market economists frequently see minimum wage legislation as mere political intervention. However, there are decent economic theories which show that, under certain circumstances, minimum wages can be beneficial, as it makes workers more productive.

President Obama has made a minimum wage increase a focal point of his economic agenda.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

Research has shown that middle-income wage earners would benefit most from a large reduction in corporate tax rates. The corporate tax is not a rich-man’s tax. Corporations don’t even pay it. They just pass the tax on in terms of lower wages and benefits, higher consumer prices, and less stockholder value.

I think people are fed up with struggling to make ends meet. It’s so easy to find yourself in a position of not being able to pay the bills for most Americans when we’re watching the cost of housing and child care and health insurance skyrocket without an increase in wage.

Instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s lower taxes for the working poor.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed. Remember: teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.

Some Western demographers have posited, due to the female shortage created by the one-child policy, that China will be forced to field a vast force – as in tens of millions strong – of wifeless men who’ll gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones.

I want to wage war against illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, unfair competition, communitarianism, delinquency.

I’m not going to raise taxes; I’m not going to have a wage increase for public employees.

Many people do not understand that business investment is a critical prosperity-booster, leading to more jobs, higher wages, and stronger family income. Put another way, rising tax and regulatory burdens that penalize investors and businesses also punish middle-income wage earners.

I’ve said to workers that I don’t care what you agree with me on politically – I hope it’s as many things as possible – but one thing that you and I absolutely agree on is that your right to organize, your right to a good wage, your right to benefits, your right to participate in the value that your hard work creates.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.

The most important lesson to take away from allowing the minimum wage and unemployment benefit data to talk is that abstract notions of what is right, good and just should be examined from a concrete, operational point of view. A dose of reality is most edifying.

In the 1960s, a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

I’d love to have our trains, our subway cars and our taxis built right here in New York City. You can create 40,000 living wage jobs… the city’s contracting power is huge.

I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs aren’t paying enough to keep families out of poverty.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

When Atletico wanted to sell me, I was told that I earned too much money and they wanted me off the wage bill. I liked that honesty.

In terms of emerging economies, we absolutely believe that the prescription is social protection and a minimum wage on which people can live.

There are few things more dangerous in a democracy than allowing a President to wage secret wars without the knowledge of the country.

When men and women, boys and girls, are denied the right to education, the right to own land, the access to basic services like healthcare and clean water, a fair price for the crops they grow, a fair wage for the work they do, or the right to be part of making decisions that affect them, the result is poverty.

We are a retailer – we are a merchant. That is our business. But we look for places to make a positive difference. There is such a thing as a double bottom line, whether it is the wage increase or what we do with environmental sustainability to limit waste.

I have no issue with raising minimum wage, but then the customer can’t say to us, ‘Why are you raising your prices?’

I’m fighting to make childcare more affordable for working parents so they can continue working and advancing their careers, closing wage gaps that for too long have held women back from the fair economic opportunities they need.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

I can tell you what people on minimum wage want: They want a career. They don’t want a minimum wage.

Wage concessions are difficult to quantify, since their magnitude depends on many operating variables.

In a perfect world, people don’t have to move to another country to get a higher wage. Ultimately, they need only be able to participate in producing output that is sold internationally.

NAFTA recognizes the reality of today’s economy – globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity.

It is true that rich people can spend more money than middle class people, but there’s this upper limit on what we can spend. I drive a very nice car, but it’s only one car. I don’t own a thousand, even though I earn a thousand times the median wage. I have a few jackets, not a few thousand.

The federal government was created to defend the United States, not to wage war upon it.

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

Folks, you’re the reason that the automobile industry is back. Whether it was the wage freezes, the plant closures, folks, you sacrificed to keep your companies open. Because of your productivity, the combined auto companies have committed to invest another $23 billion in expansion in America.

Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to ‘raise’ employment, and we’d all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.

Dad didn’t earn a big wage but even if he was really ill he’d go to work.

One in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a wage.

Leftists wage the war on Christmas using their traditional methods – government fiat and the court system. They never win voting, and they certainly don’t win in the free market, so they bravely fight their battles through big government.

My politics are food-related – food banks, the living wage, zero hour contracts – and my food is political.

I wrote a script – a script about a guy working on the automobile assembly line; I never could get money for that. I did a pilot about minimum wage workers for HBO that didn’t get picked up; they thought it was depressing, even though it was a comedy.

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.

It is an uphill fight to persuade workers that the minimum wage is not in their interest.

Like how on earth can you make 180 grand as a senator with luxe health care and sit there and be like Nero, thumbs up or down, on paying someone a living wage? I don’t understand that.

I think we’ve got to be competitive here in Illinois. It’s critical we’re competitive. We’re hurting our economy by having the minimum wage above the national. We’ve got to move back to the national.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

When I started in the business, the minimum wage was $1.25. I’ve seen an enormous number of wage increases. Basically, it applies evenly to everyone in the business.

To reward work, to grow the middle class and strengthen the economy, to give millions of Americans the respect they deserve… It’s time to raise the minimum wage.

We will never have real safety and security for wage earners unless we provide for safety and security for the wage payers and wage savers.

Especially for the young and the lowest-skilled, minimum wage becomes a toll that prevents many from entering the work force and gaining the skills that can make a low income or middle class worker a high income worker. This is so obvious that one wonders why liberals keep championing the minimum wage cause.

Minimum wage laws have never worked in terms of having the middle class attain more prosperity.

In my view, nothing would do more to reduce violence in American cities than genuine full employment – a job at a decent wage for every person who wants to work. Numerous studies have shown that violence increases with unemployment.

Raising the minimum wage represents a substantial financial burden for employers, particularly start-ups, early stage companies, and family-owned businesses. In response, business owners would be forced to either lay off workers or raise prices to offset the rise in labor costs.

We have to get very militant with some of these employers to say there’s no shortcuts, our people have a right to a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s pay, and we’ve got to get that done. And that’s going to happen.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

I was unaware of the dispute in Brooklyn. I would never knowingly wear any clothes or support any company who produced clothing with alleged wage and labor violations.

Raising the minimum wage would be a positive step in reducing poverty, the humiliation of living in poverty, and dependence on public assistance.

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There’s still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

By raising the minimum wage in California, 700,000 people are going to lose their jobs. There are a lot of opportunities for companies to prosper in Florida and compete here, and that’s what I’m going after.

Discriminatory wage practices undermine women’s ability to provide for their families and survive on a decent retirement income.

Economists argue about the relative impact of immigrants versus robots on wage stagnation – voters don’t care much. They blame immigrants. It’s easier to get mad at a person from Macedonia or Mexico, taking your job than it is to get mad at a piece of technology from Silicon Valley.

When I was young, my dad, a veteran who attended college on the GI Bill, lost his job at age 55 when the company he worked for was sold. My entire family pitched in – my mom took in sewing, and I got a minimum wage job after school.

Cleaning companies often pay their employees less than a living wage and offer no sick days or health insurance. My years of working for them still made me grimace every time I saw a little yellow car with ‘Merry Maids’ written on the side.

I wanted to fulfil the unfinished agenda of my father, which was to solve the problems of farmers, daily wage workers, and downtrodden people, irrespective of their caste and religion.

As we move beyond Women’s History Month, I am committed to advancing legislation to raise the minimum wage and ensure women are paid equally for equal work.

By providing outstanding economic leadership, this country can wage its attack successfully – and can thereby build the foundations of a peaceful world.

We are unnecessarily wasting our precious resources in wars… if we must wage war, we have to do it on unemployment, disease, poverty, and backwardness.

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.

I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever – no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights – for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance.

If you do your fair day’s work, you are certain to get your fair day’s wage – in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.

It was a Conservative government that in 2016 introduced the national living wage, giving Britain’s lowest-paid workers the biggest pay rise in 20 years.

When I was, like, 17 or 18 and didn’t really have anything I needed to buy, we would do these pub gigs for some cash and would usually just spend our wage back in the pub immediately after.

In the hyper-exploitative sector of retail and hospitality, workers are made to feel worthless – undeserving of a proper wage and genuine security.

Unemployment is ‘involuntary’ when the price is above its market clearing level. Workers are unemployed because jobs are not available at the prevailing wages, period. The only recourse is to either expand the number of jobs or somehow lower the wage.

Regardless of what the minimum wage is, you really have the market wage. And if we’re not taking care of our people, then we’re going to lose good talent, at every level.

I’m a warrior at heart; I’m an ex-Navy Seal. I’m too old to wage war anymore, and so now I wage it mentally. And so I find politics very stimulating; it’s war without guns.

Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?

Unfortunately, Democrats don’t want to wage a war on poverty or improve program integrity; they prefer talking points.

The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens.

If the opponents of an increase in the minimum wage were correct, then every time you fly to Seattle, you’ve got to bring a bagged lunch because there shouldn’t be any restaurants because they should have all have gone out of business as a result of raising the minimum wage.

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.

The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.

I spent my 20s earning minimum wage decorating cakes for a living. But one day, I looked in the mirror and realized I wanted more, for me and my people. I saw too many Native Americans struggling, and I realized we should have a voice in who our elected officials are.

When I went to FC Groningen, I had to take my bike to training – my first wage went on driving lessons. Before I signed my contract, I was 15 or 16 and working as a dishwasher in a Breda restaurant.

It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.

Middle-income wage earners have essentially had no pay increases since 2000.

The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high.

Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose no actual threat to our security.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

You just suddenly think that there’s something quite childish about acting. Basically, it’s pretending, isn’t it? It’s good fun and I enjoy it, but it’s a funny way of making a living, particularly when you make a very good wage, as I’ve been fortunate enough to do.

In the general economy, you get government involved in making market decisions – first of all, they’re going to get it wrong. For a minimum wage, you will actually reduce the number of jobs available.

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.

President Obama believes that income inequality is one of the most pressing matters facing the nation. If we are going to be a country that provides ladders of opportunity and believes in a thriving middle class, then we have to raise the minimum wage.

Money has to be an explosion of excitement and opportunity, yet we already secretly know that it doesn’t do what it promises. Nothing has ever given us as much pleasure as our pocket money when we were 12, or our first wage at the end of that first exhausting week, paid in folded cash.

Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was ‘socialist.’ The concept of the ‘minimum wage’ was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as ‘socialist.’

In 1968, the situation at Harvard was not one of which we can be proud. In that year, the proportion of minority persons in salary and wage positions was approximately 3 per cent. Virtually no minority workers were employed on Harvard construction projects.

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Today, there are more Americans working than ever before in the history of our Nation, and the average wage of those workers is higher than it has ever been in the history of our Nation.

When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.

Practically, the desirable situation ought to be one in which any reasonably responsible person willing to accept available employment can find a job paying a living wage within 48 hours.

Today, the Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years. Let me repeat: The Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years.

The only area that I would agree with minimum wage is in immigration reform, the guest worker program.

You cannot be against a raise in the minimum wage and for cutting government assistance and still say that you are worried about the people living in poverty.

I have serious concerns with the discussion around minimum wage because it drives up costs, and it could harm jobs.

High-skilled workers increasingly choose lucrative jobs that don’t serve or supervise low-skilled workers. Low-skilled productivity and wage growth has lagged as a result.

Let the D-League be for players who have been in the NBA, who are on the fringe, and that want to fight like heck to get in the NBA. They should have a living wage, not $17,000 to $25,000. A living wage.

Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.

U.S. trade policy is not just about the relationship between our nation and other countries. It is part of a larger conversation about living wage, consumer protection, job security, and a better quality of life for all Americans.

I worked on minimum wage; I didn’t go to college out of school. I worked multiple jobs, and it’s probably not something Sen. Hagan’s not had to worry about because we grew up in very different life circumstances.

For food service industry and retail, I’m for the minimum wage being increased to at least $12. Not for manufacturing. Software and robotics are going to revolutionize manufacturing in the next 10 years. In the meantime, we have to compete with overseas manufacturing.

We focus sometimes too much on the minimum wage, and we should be talking about living wages and middle class wages and pensions and benefits and the kind of thing that people in the industrial Midwest talk about all the time.

Misclassification means workers are denied not just minimum wage and overtime but other social safety net protections like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it’s a popular thing to do as well.

When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we’re not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We’re talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed.

I eat excellent bread, clean meat, good crisp veggies, organic fruits and nice wine and cheese. It is one of the things I am truly grateful for. I’m not kidding. You can’t ask a single mother of three working two jobs for minimum wage to eat that way. I am lucky.

Laws protecting this right – whatever the level of the minimum wage, and whatever the Government chooses to call it – are only as strong as the threat of enforcement is both real and feared.

In defence of Madiba’s legacy, we will continue to wage a relentless war on corruption and mismanagement of the resources of our country.

We always strive to be the best in the wage package.

It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.

When I recently spent a night at a homeless shelter, I was dismayed that members of the middle class had moved in and that earning above the minimum wage did not protect adults from having to share a room with dozens of others.

To improve the standard of living for working folks, we have to raise the minimum wage and empower workers to fight for their interests in an economic and political system that’s stacked against them.

Many unhoused people work full time but earn starvation, unlivable wages. Some struggle to access mental health services or substance use treatment, making earning a consistent and stable wage nearly impossible.

No one seriously believes that cutting the minimum wage is good for workers.

One of the great constraints on economic growth and employment is that the tax and benefits system has grown up over generations and does not give the right incentives. Increasing the minimum wage does not solve this problem.

One of the biggest disagreements between Sen. Hagan and I – I don’t believe we should be building an economy that’s founded on making ends meet on minimum wage. It’s impossible; it’s a stepping stone.

My mother raised me herself, along with my six younger siblings, in Cleveland, and life wasn’t easy even in the best of times. At age 42, she died, and it fell on me, then aged 22 and working minimum wage, to take care of all of us. At the time, I was newly married with a baby son. And I was deeply afraid for our future.

Like any parents, mine wanted me to have a secure job with a regular wage and career prospects. And the one job my father knew of, that he’d had experience of himself, was the army, so he could help me in that direction.

He thinks with regret of the great days when he could at harvest time at least go down into Hungary and work on the big estates and bring back, as his wage, a side of bacon for the winter. That was wealth, to him.

Yes, there is some evidence that migration can slightly depress wages at the bottom end of the labour market, but that’s an argument for a genuine living wage, for ensuring all workers are employed on the same terms and conditions, and for extending unionisation.

Well, what there ought to be is an international labor organization, a confederation of the trade unions of all the countries speaking for the workers who are competing with one another, and talking about the difference in wage levels between, say, Europe and Indonesia.

Now, California is a big state, we’re a very diverse state, full of diverse communities with local variations in the cost of living and local business conditions. Just like the rest of the country. And let me tell you, the sky did not fall when California enacted a $15 minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage – and that’s good news for Ohio.

Many women are heads of households. Many are the primary wage earners for their families.

If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That’s why ‘average is over.’

With millions of family wage manufacturing jobs lost since 2001, we need an energy bill that takes bold action to tap into American ingenuity in order to lead the world in new clean energy technology, rather than playing catch-up to the Japanese, Danish, and Germans.

I reject the idea that any job is too hard or too dirty for American workers to do. American workers just expect and demand to be paid a decent wage.

The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States, and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

It’s not so long ago I was paying £250 a season to play. I don’t think in my lifetime it will ever get to wage parity with the men, but we have made so many great strides already.

When we lift the wage floor, it not only betters the lives of those whose wages are directly affected, it also lifts the economy as a whole.

The struggle to have a living wage doesn’t come easy. You’re ready to work, you want it, you seek it… but it’s not like it’s just given to you.

It’s great that Maryland is tied for having the lowest wage gap between our working men and women of any state in the nation, but there’s more work to do to eliminate that gap entirely.

Hoover had prevented ‘an immediate attack upon wages as a basis of maintaining profits,’ but the result of wiping out profits and maintaining artificial wage rates was chronic, unprecedented depression.

Being unemployed – or working at minimum wage – is rough in the best of circumstances.