Best Living Wage Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.”

People Wells Hard Parent Painful Farms Southern Grandparent Parents And Grandparents Living Wage Appalachia

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.”

Different America Figures Tough Europe Indonesia North America Living Wage

Author:John Malkovich

“Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.”

Care Political Rights Positive Health Health Care Zero Shelter Tricky Living Wage Political Rights

Author:P. J. O'Rourke

“The ultimate object of education should be, Gandhi said, to help create not only a balanced and harmonious individual but also a balanced and harmonious society where true justice prevails, where there is no unnatural division between the haves and the have-nots, and where everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to live and the right to freedom.”

Should Said Helping Individual Justice Society Objects Ultimate Educational Division Balanced Literacy Assured Unnatural Harmonious Living Wage True Justice

Author:Arun Manilal Gandhi

“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.”

“Leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do not only to our environment but to our institutions.”

“It probably wouldn't be good for our economy for a bunch of these jobs to come back because, there's no way that people could be getting paid a living wage on some of these jobs - at least in order to be competitive in an international setting.”

People Way Jobs Order Economy Paid International Be Good Setting Bunch Settings Living Wage

Author:Barack Obama

“Those externalized costs have always included labor. It is only the decline over time of the minimum wage in real dollars that's made the fast food industry possible, along with feedlot agriculture, pharmaceuticals on the farm, pesticides and regulatory forbearance. All these things are part of the answer to the question: Why is that crap so cheap? Our food is dishonestly priced. One of the ways in which it's dishonestly priced is the fact that people are not paid a living wage to process it, to serve it, to grow it, to slaughter it.”

“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.”

Persons Jobs Hours Situation Accepting Willing Ought Responsible Available Employment Desirable Living Wage 48 Hours Responsible Person

Author:William Vickrey

“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.”

“You know, this is a business where only 15% make a living wage and only 9% of those are women. But I figured somebody has to be that 15%, somebody's got to be one of those women.”

Knows Business Living Wage

Author:Marcia Wallace

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

Mean News Minimum Good News Ohio Minimum Wage Living Wage

Author:Sherrod Brown

“New Orleans is a city whose basic industry is the service industry. That's why it makes its money. That's - it brings people to the city. People come to the city and experience the wonders of this extraordinary city and everything else. The question is that, how do we create jobs which are the jobs that have pay, that - living wages?”

People Jobs Pay Cities Wonder Industry Extraordinary Wages New Orleans Living Wage Service Industry

Author:Danny Glover

“Paying people a fair wage is a sign of respect and acknowledgement of the value of people's contributions to the business. When people are treated fairly and with respect, they will provide unparalleled levels of support and commitment inside the business, and to clients and customers. Everyone is more successful when people are paid a living wage.”

People Values Levels Support Successful Commitment Fairs Paid Customers Treated Contribution Clients Wages Acknowledgement Living Wage

Author:Amy B. Lyman

“These teenagers [that drop out of school to take the higher wage jobs] take jobs that would go to unskilled adults, making it harder for those adults to make the transition from welfare to work.”

School Jobs Higher Adults Harder Teenager Welfare Transition Living Wage

Author:Greg Mankiw

“I believe employers should be aware that employees who earn under $10 an hour cannot lead an independent life. But I do not believe that government should dictate wages. We have seen this fail in Socialist and Communist countries. It will do irreparable harm.”

Should Believe Country Government I Believe Hours Failing Independent Harm Employee Communist Socialist Wages Employers Living Wage Irreparable Irreparable Harm Independent Life

Author:Richard Riordan

“By mandating an even higher minimum, the living wage prices even more people out of work. The people who push these cockamamie ideas never seem to ask why any employer would hire someone at $8.23 if that person's services are only valued in the marketplace at, say, $5.00.”

People Ifs Persons Ideas Seems Asks Higher Minimum Employers Marketplace Living Wage

Author:Lawrence Reed

“Be prepared for the creation of an intrusive bureaucracy to police the ordinance by examining the books and payroll ledgers of businesses.”

Book Creation Police Prepared Be Prepared Bureaucracy Examining Ordinances Payroll Living Wage

Author:Randy Hamilton

“If the proposed ordinance is adopted it will hurt small women- and minority-owned businesses the most, the majority of which are already struggling mightily to do business in this city of higher-than average costs of doing business.”

Ifs Hurt Cities Struggle Higher Cost Majority Average Minorities Adopted Ordinances Living Wage

Author:Randy Hamilton

“The loony tuners are at it again. The cost of doing business in Oakland is already about the highest in the state. Compared with other cities, adoption of the proposed”

States Cities Cost Highest Adoption Living Wage Oakland

Author:Randy Hamilton

“The quickest way to kill jobs is to have this ordinance pass. It is dumb and dangerous.”

Way Jobs Dangerous Dumb Ordinances Living Wage

Author:Norm Coleman

“[Martin Luther King, Jr.] would want us to celebrate him, his birth, and his legacy by acting upon his agenda, by realizing the dream, by making the minimum wage a living wage, by having not just family and medical leave, but paid sick leave for our workers, [and] by having quality, affordable child care so that our families, the power of women can be unleashed in our economy and in our society.”

“Sharp increases in the minimum wage rate are also inflationary. Frequently workers paid more than the minimum gauge their wages relative to it. This is especially true of those workers who are paid by the hour. An increase in the minimum therefore increases their demands for higher wages in order to maintain their place in the structure of wages. And when the increase is as sharp as it is in H.R. 7935, the result is sure to be a fresh surge of inflation.”

Order Hours Results Economy Higher Demand Increase Paid Impact Structure Workers Rate Relative Minimum Wages Inflation Prudence Minimum Wage Gauges Living Wage

Author:Richard M. Nixon

“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.”

Firsts Has Beens Jobs Force Nations Hours Levels Opinion Economic Labor Workers Cents Minimum Predictions Catastrophe Salary Minimum Wage Boost Living Wage Underpaid Labor Force

Author:Jimmy Carter

“A general flat minimum-wage law for all industry is permissible, but I do not think that it is a particularly wise method of achieving the end. I know much better methods of providing a minimum for everybody. But once you turn from laying down a general minimum for all industry to decreeing particular and different minimum for different industries, then, of course, you make the price mechanism inoperative, because it is no longer the price mechanism which will guide people between industries and trades.”

“In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.”

“Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about.”

Source: By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades

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Living Wage Quotes