Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

The worst thing about losing this job: I’m no longer covered by NBC. I have to sign up for ObamaCare.

While some people are certainly seeing economic benefits, many others are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance and struggling to make ends meet.

I don't give a damn about the stock market. But I do care about jobs.

And I have to say, what motivates me every day and I know my Democratic colleagues is to remember that every day 14,000 people get up in the morning with insurance that go to bed at night without it and most of them because they lost their job.

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

The Negro is trying to enter a social community and a tradition of work-and-income which are in the process of vanishing even for the hitherto privileged white worker Jobs are disappearing under the impact of highly efficient, progressively less costly machines.

Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy; assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old.

Every job lost is a bomb blowing up under a family.

I am telling you, you can’t play politics with people’s jobs.

American capitalism today offers us no assurances that our efforts will be rewarded by security, stability or enough income to let us live well or at least well enough… Contemporary capitalism turns all workers—laborers and managers alike—into economic junk. The days if a long career with one employer, once a key part of the American dream, are long gone for most workers.

Americans want jobs. They want affordable health insurance. They want an education.

Jobless people will have no self-confidence. And they feel they are worthless because when you don't have a job you have to rely on someone.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

Giving away food only encourages the poor not to starve. Increase productivity, not employment. Insure profits before we insure people Don’t be haters! We’re job creators. Bailout banks, not these losers (people evicted by banks foreclosing on their mortgages).

I have enquired a good deal into the state of employment about London, and I find, to my great regret, that the number of workmen of all trades out of employment is very large, and that it has been increased by the reduction of all the works under Government, owing to the clamor for economy in the House of Commons. Several hundred workmen have been discharged at Westminster Palace; at Buckingham Palace much fewer hands are employed than are really wanted; the formation of Battersea Park has been suspended, etc., etc. Surely this is not the moment for the tax-payers to economize upon the working classes! …. I think the Government is bound to do what it can to help the working classes over the present moment of distress.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

I wish that every Chinese citizen can live a life of satisfaction, every peasant child can go to school and every person reaching a working age can have a job. I wish people wouldn't have to worry about medical care if they are sick, particularly those in rural areas. I believe that this is the dream of every Chinese person.

Suppose, … that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?

This is a political season where politicians will do almost anything to prey on the public’s fear of job loses.

[It] is exactly what politicians want. They want you to feel and behave like children while they pretend to be the all-knowing benevolent father. While they rile you up about how immigrants are stealing your jobs, they distract you from enlightening facts, including the assessment of some experts that the influx of Latino immigrant workers of the past 25 years has had less effect on employment patterns than factories that moved abroad, the decline of labor unions and the recurring recessions. So while we’re told to focus on building a massive wall to keep out immigrants, the real causes of job loss and economic instability continue unabated.

Job loss is coming like a tsunami.

I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union.

What America needs is jobs. Lots of jobs.

I care about America. I care about the people that can't find jobs. I care about my 20 grandkids and what kind of America they are going to have.

The idea that you won't have a job is a real fear that people go through, so when people talk about jobs and say, 'I'm gonna create jobs!' or, 'There's gonna be a loss of jobs,' those are just words. But the reality of someone actually losing their job - I mean, it's their entire life for most people in this country.