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.
