Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

These days an income is something you can't live without - or within.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

People can't live on $7.50 an hour.

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach.

No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty.

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.

In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.

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.

No woman who works full time and plays by the rules should have to raise her family in poverty.

Nobody in America lives at the survival level, Most people in the world would love to live the way poor Americans live.

No one who works full time and has children should be poor in America.

The laboring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.

Nothing helps families make end meet than higher wages.

The average family earning minimum wage spends 141 percent of their income struggling to meet basic needs - food, shelter, clothing.

Thirteen thousand dollars a year is not enough to raise a family. That's not enough to pay your bills and save for their future. That's barely enough to provide for even the most basic needs.

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.

My total year's income from working as hard as I possibly could from writing went from like $30 one year to about $70 the next year. And it made me realize that maybe you couldn't really pay the rent that way.

I don't know if I can live on my income or not - the government won't let me try it.

I pay our nanny more than I'm earning.

My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.

All I ever wanted to do was be able to pay my rent.

I don't like dirty. That's why I hate cigarettes. A little bit of alcohol is O.K., but no drugs. And I like to sleep alone because I wake up, I walk around, I bring my computer with me to bed, I have a great time.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty.

Let me tell you something: I have members in my charter who, after paying their rent and house bills and taking care of their families, don't even have enough money left over to pay the fifteen dollars a week dues.