Emma Thompson Quotes

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

Poverty makes you work really hard.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.

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

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

An enormous number of mothers in the U.S. are working double time, graveyard shifts, and more than one job just to put food on the table for their kids.

The sad fact is that in communities such as mine, the minimum wage is the maximum wage.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

It's wrong that so many hardworking people - people working full-time, or even multiple jobs - need public assistance just to survive.

Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.

America's vast population of working poor can only get so poor before even Walmart is out of reach.

My family was mostly unemployed working class.

Poor families are living above their means, in apartments they cannot afford. The thing is, those apartments are already at the bottom of the market.

I live in a working-class community that is struggling at the poverty line, where people who work full-time jobs still at my corner bodega use food stamps. Do you think they care what the stock market's doing today or what the GDP number is? No.

Coronavirus has exposed for all what many of us already knew - some of our most important workers have barely enough to live on, and millions are condemned to financial insecurity, inequality and food poverty.

There are far too many people who get up early in the morning, and work hard, who cannot make ends meet.

People assume NFL cheerleaders are within some vague sniffing distance of the good life, but a Ben-Gal is paid seventy-five bucks per game. That is correct: seventy-five bucks for each of ten home games. The grand cash total per season does not keep most of them flush in hair spray, let alone gas money to and from practice.

I'm the sole provider for my child, I don't get any help. I'm not saying we're poverty stricken, but it does mean I have to work hard.

Being unemployed - or working at minimum wage - is rough in the best of circumstances.

Vast areas are witness to the struggles of destitute populations trying to survive under unlivable conditions.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.

When I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn't afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po'.

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

Many hard working people in low paid jobs get housing benefit.