David Ricardo Quotes

Everybody feels better about himself, his community, and his country if employers are paying workers well. Economics, though, teaches that if every employer is pressured to raise wages, some labor will be priced out of the market.

Many of my students assume that government protection is the only thing ensuring decent wages for most American workers. But basic economics shows that competition between employers for workers can be very effective at preventing businesses from misbehaving.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

There are some who incline to favor a “minimum wage,” but who “kick at” a “maximum price.” Such surely forget that the capitalist could here just as easily as in the case of a rise in wages compelled by a workmen’s combination, or by any other cause, take his old profits out at the other end by raising the price of the manufactured article.

There is nothing to arbitrate. Workers have nothing to do with the amount of wages they shall receive. This is solely the business of the company.

I am quite uncomfortable using legislation to peg the minimum wage.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Another relic of Medievalism was the regulation of wages by Justices of the Peace …. The Justices often ordained a rise in wages, and the workmen themselves were strongly in favour of this method of fixing them. The employers on their part also often approved of it.

I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage.

If you are trying to favor the unions by having more rigid labor market and keeping wages very high, you could be blocking people from getting new jobs.

The concept of minimum wage is crazy, if you really stop to think about it. If $8 an hour seems right, why not $20 an hour? If it's coming by order of the government, why stop at any level? Why not just say everyone should get what Gates gets?

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 owners have the right to pay you whatever they want to. They don't have to pay you if they don't want to.

Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.

If every other store in town is paying workers $9 an hour, one offering $8 will find it hard to hire anyone - perhaps not when unemployment is high, but certainly in normal times. Robust competition is a powerful force helping to ensure that workers are paid what they contribute to their employers' bottom lines.

In a free market, businesses compete for customers by keeping prices down and for labor by keeping wages up.

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

The problem with one single minimum wage is that you don't allow for younger people, who are less skilled and maybe more easily pushed out of the job market, or that the minimum wage should vary for different regions.

When union membership goes down, so do wages.

I'm more concerned about maximum wages, not minimum wages.

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.

I don't expect to get a standing ovation from businessmen when I call for higher wages.

Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.

The minimum wage was due for an increase, but it was important that we offset its cost to small businesses.

The rise or fall of wages is common to all states of society, whether it be the stationary, the advancing, or the retrograde state.