Wage Regulation Quotes

The real minimum wage is zero.

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.

Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'

I'm against having a Fed. It's socialism in its worst form. But until the Fed is gotten rid of, the only economic variable the poor have to counteract the injustices of the Fed is the minimum wage law.

Second, there were the discussions and drafts leading up to the White Paper on Employment Policy of 1944 in which the UK government accepted the maintenance of employment as an obligation of governmental policy.

Giving a minimum wage reduces inequality significantly.

Raising the overtime threshold - something that is about to happen. This is more complex so not as many people understand it, but it's equally consequential.

You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.

I grew up working for the minimum wage at Hardee's and knows first hand how important the minimum wage is. I support a state based minimum wage so every state can set their own minimum wage based on their cost of living.

Minimum wage law is the 'People's Fed.' Tie minimum wage to money supply. If there is pushback against this idea, then shut down the Fed and its ability to distort the economy, penalizing labor, or make the Fed's distortions available to all businesses and all workers.

The minimum wage is something that F.D.R. put in place a long time ago during the Great Depression. I don't think it worked then. It didn't solve any problems then and it hasn't solved any problems in 50 years.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices - a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy.

Lawmakers zealously guard their prerogatives, and as much as some might oppose a minimum-wage increase, they will not want to see the issue taken out of their hands.

I want people to make a lot more than $9. $9 is not enough. The problem is that if you can't do that by mandating it in the minimum wage laws. Minimum wage laws never worked in terms of helping the middle class attain more prosperity.

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.

On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.

When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.

The overtime rule was frankly diluted in 2004 by a regulation put in place by the Bush administration.

Germany cannot get out of the euro. What it has to do, therefore, is make the economy more flexible - to eliminate the restrictions on prices, on wages and on employment; in short, the regulations that keep 10 percent of the German workforce unemployed.

Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

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

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

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are mode.