Top 100 Quotes About The Minimum Wage
#1. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will benefit about 28 million workers across the country. And it will help businesses, too - raising the wage will put more money in people's pockets, which they will pump back into the economy by spending it on goods and services in their communities.
Thomas Perez
#3. I believe in raising the minimum wage and equal pay for work.
Hillary Clinton
#4. When I was a student at Princeton University, I was working part time in a grocery store. I saw an ad for teachers of a prep course. I don't remember what it paid, but it was easily double or triple the minimum wage.
John Katzman
#5. There's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs.
Mitt Romney
#6. If you're fighting against a minimum wage increase, you're fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage.
Frank Luntz
#7. 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.
Fred DeLuca
#8. The overtime threshold is to the middle class as the minimum wage is to low-wage workers.
Nick Hanauer
#9. 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.
Rick Scott
#10. Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.
Nancy Pelosi
#11. We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage.
Iris Dement
#12. If I were in charge of the government, I would index the minimum wage to inflation, so that way, everybody knows what they can count on.
Fred DeLuca
#13. I don't know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor.
Newt Gingrich
#14. The minimum wage now in our country, I think we've set that, so there are a lot of people have benefited from it in our country, but I think we ought to review how much it ought to be, and whether or not we ought to have increases in the minimum wage.
Linda McMahon
#15. 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.
Nick Hanauer
#16. In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.
Bernie Sanders
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.
William J. Clinton
#20. Mr. Speaker, the time for an increase in the minimum wage has not just arrived; it is long overdue.
Sherwood Boehlert
#21. 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
#22. I think the right-wingers have to buddy up to the fact that either the minimum wage has to go up, and people get enough money to live, or you're always going to have people needing government assistance. You can't have it both ways.
Bill Maher
#23. 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
#24. Obama's gonna play Santa Claus with the minimum wage. He's got no successes to brag about. He cannot talk about a robust job market. In fact, the very fact he's talking about the minimum wage is evidence there is no robust job market.
Rush Limbaugh
#25. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.
Marco Rubio
#26. The minimum wage isn't earned only by people working at fast food restaurants and in service industry work - the average income for positions like nursing assistants, preschool teachers and paramedics are all under $15.
David Rolf
#27. The Republicans believe in the minimum wage
the more the minimum, the better.
Harry Truman
#28. 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.
Christina Romer
#29. The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.
Thomas Sowell
#30. The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.
Milton Friedman
#32. I do not support raising the minimum wage, and the reason is as follows. When the minimum wage is raised, workers are priced out of the market. That is the economic reality that seems, at least so far, to be missing from this discussion.
John Sununu
#33. If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine.
Marco Rubio
#34. Regulate the banks, get money out of elections; raise the minimum wage, environmental issues. They're all very important and the Occupy movement made a difference. It shifted not only the discourse but to some extent, action on these issues.
Noam Chomsky
#35. MILWAUKEE- President Barack Obama went to Milwaukee on Monday to talk up an improving economy and push Congress to boost the minimum wage.
Anonymous
#36. Don't let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs,
Hillary Clinton
#37. We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.
Henry Ford
#38. 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
#39. Raising the minimum wage isn't just pro-worker; it's pro-economic growth.
Thomas Perez
#40. The minimum wage was enacted in 1937 during the Great Depression and it has been increased 16 times. It's a well-established economic policy to help families.
John Freeman
#41. 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.
Thomas Perez
#42. To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise,
Barack Obama
#43. 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
#44. We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live in poverty
Barack Obama
#45. Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.
Edmund Phelps
#46. Raising the minimum wage is very efficient. Everybody's on the same playing field, it's a very simple rule, it doesn't require a lot of administration, you don't have to negotiate anything. It just is what it is.
Nick Hanauer
#47. I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.
Henry Rollins
#49. The way China is looking to boost consumer spending is astounding. They are going to boost the minimum wage by 13 percent a year every year for five years ... I don't know if people realize how dramatic that is.
William Fung
#50. What we need to do is raise the minimum wage. We also need to hold onto equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America.
John F. Kerry
#51. Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.
Russ Carnahan
#52. Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.
Carl Bernstein
#53. 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
#54. Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist.
Tom DeLay
#55. Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.
Nick Hanauer
#56. It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels.
Jon Corzine
#57. 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.
Matt Gonzalez
#58. 6.6 million people will benefit from a rise in the minimum wage.
Russ Carnahan
#59. 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.
Edmund Phelps
#60. 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.
Bernie Sanders
#61. 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.
Howard Schultz
#62. Minimum wage increases. The Nobel Prize economist Milton Friedman has observed that the minimum wage is "one of the most ... anti-black laws on the statute books" because it destroys entry level jobs for second paycheck earners, teens, and other unskilled workers.
David Horowitz
#63. The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.
Bernie Sanders
#64. Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.
Elizabeth Warren
#65. This is the debate we have every time we talk about the minimum wage, that if we raise it even 50 cents, that it means employers are just going to shut down. It's not true.
Stephanie Cutter
#66. Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.
Ron Paul
#67. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.
Murray Rothbard
#68. The minimum wage is mostly an entry-level wage for young people.
Mitch McConnell
#69. A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.
Marcy Kaptur
#70. Going to a movie is a two-hour experience; at $7.50 for a ticket, you are valuing your time at far less than the minimum wage. If you don't understand the film, don't leave. If you understand it all too well and hate it, get out of your seat and walk up the aisle. You will feel empowered.
Gene Siskel
#71. 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.
Bill Pascrell
#72. 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.
Paul Tonko
#73. A September 2015 poll found that, by a 3-1 margin, voters are more likely to support political candidates who favor raising the minimum wage.
David Rolf
#74. I grew up working for the minimum wage at Hardee's and knows first hand how important the minimum wage is. I support a state based minimum wage so every state can set their own minimum wage based on their cost of living.
Joni Ernst
#75. The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.
Richard Trumka
#76. 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.
Arthur Laffer
#77. President Obama wants Congress to increase the minimum wage. Believe me, when it comes to doing the minimum for their wage, Congress knows what it's talking about.
Jay Leno
#78. 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.
Thomas Perez
#79. Raising the minimum wage a lot across the board would make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it's an indispensable part of solving the problem.
Nick Hanauer
#80. 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.
Barack Obama
#81. I do think there would be a receptivity to somebody who campaigned in a straightforward, cohesive way, supporting an increase in the minimum wage, being for universal health care for all Americans, and opposing trade agreements like NAFTA.
Russ Feingold
#82. Over the last 10 years a huge amount has been achieved in getting people into work. Measures such as the New Deal, tax credits, the minimum wage and improved childcare have brought about record numbers of people in work, a number that is still rising despite the global economic slowdown.
Lucy Powell
#83. The minimum wage was due for an increase, but it was important that we offset its cost to small businesses.
J. D. Hayworth
#84. [W]e have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: Hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment while significantly increasing workers' earnings.
Paul Krugman
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.
Sherrod Brown
#88. 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.
Jackie Speier
#89. it is easier to mock and deride individual fat people than to fix food deserts, school lunches, corn subsidies, inadequate or nonexistent public transportation, unsafe sidewalks and parks, healthcare, mental healthcare, the minimum wage, and your own insecurities.
Lindy West
#90. Any way you slice it, increasing the minimum wage in Michigan ... is likely to make it more difficult for the working poor to find jobs ... those who most need the work will have a harder time finding it.
Paul Kersey
#91. 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
#92. Is it really necessary to reward the CEO with several million dollars? Why isn't it logical or common sense to pay the minimum-wage employee another quarter, give a quarterly fifty-dollar bonus, or even provide a two-hundred-dollar gas gift card?
John-Talmage Mathis
#93. Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income.
Mark Dayton
#94. 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.
Bernie Sanders
#95. 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.
Colleen Hanabusa
#96. 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.
Dalton McGuinty
#97. I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books in its effect, not its intent.
Milton Friedman
#99. I think the minimum wage ought to keep pace with inflation.
Mitt Romney
#100. Many unions have contracts with employers that are based on a multiple of the prevailing minimum wage. If the minimum wage goes up, union salaries go up by a similar percentage.
Neal Boortz
