Sherwood Boehlert Quotes

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.

We never had it as rough as the kids have it today. Look at the price of a gallon of gas or a piece of real estate or a college education.

The prices are ridiculous... I don't see how people can go back and forth to work or to school. How can we afford the gas?

Americans feel squeezed between prices that are rising and wages which are not.

The middle class today would be poor by the standards of the 1950s. Today, with two people working, they would still live paycheck to paycheck.

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

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

Right now, every American is affected by high energy prices. Working families, small businesses and consumers across the country are feeling the pinch with no end in sight.

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.

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

Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

A rise of prices necessarily results in a diminution of the enjoyments of the laboring class until they can force the employers, through a long process of agitation, to make an increase in their wages.

It's very difficult for the middle class in America to keep up because of the inflationary pressure and the devaluation of the dollar.

Americans shouldn't have to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet.

I think it is inflationary. I think it actually is counterproductive in many ways. You end up costing jobs from people who are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.

Workers' wages are not keeping up with inflation. Their wages are not on pace with the amount of work that they do. We work harder and longer in America and still people's wages are not keeping up with that.

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues.

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.

And as you point out, for American families who struggle every day to figure out how do they pay, we talk about gasoline prices. That throws budgets into a real problem when you have budgeted really tight.

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.

For too many, to work means having less income.

Inflation outstripped real wages for people who work for pay from others.

It must be awfully frustrating to get a small raise at work and then have it all eaten by a higher cost of commuting.