Stephen Moore Quotes

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.

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

I'm not sure there's another way to help move more people out of poverty than to raise the minimum wage.

The real minimum wage is zero.

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 national minimum wage has not been increased in 9 years. By year's end, 21 States across America will have a minimum wage exceeding the Federal minimum wage.

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.

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.

The increase in inequality in income is a longtime trend, but the pressure on middle- and low-income workers is going up rapidly. Especially if they live in an area where there are high housing and gas prices, like California.

There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

This is the middle-class equivalent of raising the minimum wage.

People working full time should not have to raise their children in poverty.

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.

If you think about $7.25 an hour, that's $290 a week. It's inhumane to have that kind of wage.

The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.

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.

The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.

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

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.