Quotes about Wage Controls

Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hope, George, that you know what you're doing.

After the Korean War there was a complex web of economic controls in place. Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey led the cabinet faction urging rapid removal of the controls while others argued the opposite position. The President went along with his Treasury Secretary:

Barbara Castle

Britain in the 1970s was undoubtedly an economic mess because of the oil price explosion.

Steven Rattner

The stagflation of the 1970s blessed us with damaging wage and price controls and the utterly counterintuitive supply-side notion - famously drawn on a napkin - that cutting taxes would lead to higher tax revenues.

Dick Cheney

You know, I've got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake.

Joe Davidson

When wage controls and other legal restrictions on Canadian workers of the government's only answer to that country's deepening economic problems, the labor movement's response has to be fundamentally political.

Ann Coulter

As president, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, created the Environmental Protection Agency, initiated race-based hiring schemes, signed SALT I with the Soviets and instituted rapprochement with the Red Chinese. All of this resulted in liberals ... despising him even more!

Rush Limbaugh

Obama is from this group that resents the private sector, resents the capitalistic means of production.

Madonna Ciccone

If I were President, … schoolteachers would be paid more than movie stars and basketball players.

Arnold J. Toynbee

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.

Description of pre Industrial Revolution wage controls. Generally, they were quite popular with employees and employers alike. There was also a great deal of price fixing. These produced stability whenever weather of disease affected the labor force and eliminated continuous labor/management strife whenever conditions changed. There were no unions or other labor organizations and the Justice of the Peace was the de facto arbitrator of a compulsory arbitration. There was also a perception of fairness and not just economic power determining decisions. With the industrial revolution, the number of different jobs and skills exploded and the old system was no longer practical. This started hundreds of years of labor / management approaches with none yet considered ideal. This is another example of how modernization brings additional problems along with the great benefits by which all of us are healthier, wealthier, better educated, have more leisure time, more freedom and control over our own lives.

Edward III

Likewise let butchers, fishmongers, hostlers, brewers, bakers, pullers and all other vendors of any victuals, be bound to sell such victuals for a reasonable price, having regard for the price at which such victuals are sold in the adjoining places: so that such vendors may have moderate gains, not excessive…

The Black Plague, which raged in Europe from 1347 to 1349, had left relatively few able bodied people alive. Given this shortage of labor there was a rapid inflation, especially to the distress of the landed class who had to pay much more for their food. The king therefore established what amounted to price controls, wage controls and forces labor. See {611125} and {611126}

Edward III

Every man and woman of our kingdom of England, of whatever condition, whether bond or free, who is able bodied and below the age of sixty years, not living from trade nor carrying on a fixed craft, nor having of his own the means of living, or land of his own with regard to the cultivation of which he might occupy himself, and not serving another, if he, considering his station, be sought after to serve in a suitable service, he shall be bound to serve him who has seen fit so to seek after him; and he shall take only the wages liveries, meed or salary which, in the places where he sought to serve, were accustomed to be paid in the twentieth year of our reign of England

This is one of the favorite quotations of students of labor relations. The Black Plague, which raged in Europe from 1347 to 1349, had left relatively few able bodied people alive. Given this shortage of labor, the price that workers could command rapidly increased. The wealthy were outraged that the law of supply and demand and the marketplace produced such a labor inflations and the king then passed this draconian decree that in effect was one of the early attempts at wage control. It went further in that the workers were required to work for the official wages and had no choice of not working at all. In effect, labor was drafted. See {611124} and {611126}

Milton Friedman

In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom... .

Whether blameworthy or not, the use of the cloak of social responsibility, and the nonsense spoken in its name by influential and prestigious businessmen, does clearly harm the foundations of a free society. I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely far-sighted and clear-headed in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly short-sighted and muddle-headed in matters that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of business in general. This short-sightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or income policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally controlled system than effective governmental control of prices and wages.

The short-sightedness is also exemplified in speeches by businessmen on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked and immoral and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, businessmen seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.

Jimmy Carter

I reject the advice of those who think the only way to fight inflation is to throw millions of people out of work .... I guarantee you that I will not fight inflation with your jobs.

David Ricardo

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

Wage Controls Quotes