Douglas R. Oberhelman Quotes

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.

While prices of goods continue to rise, American worker's wages remain stagnant.

The cost of living has gone up another dollar a quart.

Today, the Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years. Let me repeat: The Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years.

A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.

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.

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 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.

Employers love cheap labor, but a country should train its own people.

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.

To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.

Middle-income wage earners have essentially had no pay increases since 2000.

I have serious concerns with the discussion around minimum wage because it drives up costs, and it could harm jobs.

Increasing minimum wage doesn't build a stronger economy.

Obviously, we want people to be paid a wage that could help make ends meet, but when you increase artificially the cost of labor to do a job, then oftentimes, those jobs will just go away.

In the 1950s and 1960s, an explosion of great corporate jobs, together with a restricted supply of labor, produced healthy wage growth.

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.

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.

My wife and I decided to try and kick start our kitchens to a $15 minimum wage for cooks. I've probably had to go through and raise every menu price now by 50 cents because it took away my profit. I just underestimated what it was going to cost.

I think it's much more important to keep people in work than have pay rises.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.

That it is logical, fair and reasonable to maintain the purchasing power of an hour's work in terms of goods and services the employee must purchase in his daily living.

The question today is whether we should be creating millions of new jobs at present wages or fewer new jobs at better wages.

Median compensation in America has been stagnant over 25 of the last 30 years, the only exceptions being the last 5 years of the 1990s.

An industrialist's answer [to inflation] is to charge more for his product to the public, never to cut his own profits. Labor's answer is even more natural. Since the worker would have to change his entire mode of life, labor asks for higher wages to cover the higher expenses.