Labor Productivity Quotes

In America, we started the public school system very early in the century, and as a consequence we had more skilled workers than any nation on Earth, which meant that we were more productive than any nation on Earth.

All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.

Since, however, the reduced surplus value is to be distributed among them in like manner, the modification of their respective parts in the production of surplus value must find expression in a modification of the prices.

Labor is the source of all wealth, and of all civilization; and since it is only through society that generally productive labor is possible, the whole product of labor, where there is a general obligation to work, belongs to society, - that is, to all its members, by equal right, to each according to his reasonable needs.

Making labor less expensive helps firms hire people.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.

Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.

The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. But most people don't choose to do that. They are willing to work hard to harvest the technological bounty that is available to them. Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity.

Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

Modern views show that capitalistic income is not an exploitation, but that in the profits, taken as a whole, a part of the value that has been created is really due to the land or the capital.

Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.

In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.

… increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor

We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

Most of the slaves, who were thus unconditionally freed, returned without any solicitation to their former masters, to serve them, at stated wages; as free men. The work, which they now did, was found to better done than before.

The better his [a laborer’s] machinery, and the more readily it can be obtained, the larger will be his production....

The standard growth theory tells us that economic growth in per capita basis comes from mainly two sources: capital deepening and total factor productivity growth, or TFP growth.

Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.

Individual income can grow only as fast as productivity rises.

The high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity for work.

There can be no freedom of trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products....

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.