Living Wage Quotes

• No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Mean, Labor Day

  Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.

  Bernie Sanders

  Jobs, Minimum Wage, Poverty

  FaceBook post by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Sep 25, 2013

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• Paying people a fair wage is a sign of respect and acknowledgement of the value of people's contributions to the business. When people are treated fairly and with respect, they will provide unparalleled levels of support and commitment inside the business, and to clients and customers. Everyone is more successful when people are paid a living wage.

  Amy B. Lyman

  Commitment, Successful, People

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• An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.

  Fiorello H. La Guardia

  Pay, Decent, Workers

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• In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Mean, Simple

  Franklin D. Roosevelt's statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living-a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Immature, Age, Normal

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• A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Race, Would Be

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.28

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• Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.

  Sherrod Brown

  Mean, Ohio, News

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• I want to applaud those workers rallying to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. I believe strongly that a great nation will not survive when so few have so much and so many have so little. Every worker in America should be given respect, dignity and the wages and benefits they need to take care of their family.

  Bernie Sanders

  Believe, America, Minimum Wage

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• I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap. They are too cheap when the man or woman who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow. I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process.

  Benjamin Harrison

  Men, Age, Doe

  "Rain Still Follows Him: The President's Vermont Trip Marked by Storms". Speech in Rutland, Vermont, reported in The New York Times, August 29, 1891 issue p. 5,

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• In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.

  Paul Krugman

  Essence, Ideas, Apples

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• It's a generational project just to get America to live up fully to its ideals and to have the kind of society where everybody has a shot, and every kid is getting a good education, and people are getting living wages, and they have decent retirement.

  Barack Obama

  Retirement, Kids, America

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I first came into the labor force in 1941 when the minimum wage was 40 cents an hour, and that was my first job. And each time that we've tried to boost the lower level of salary for the most underpaid workers, there have been predictions of catastrophe. But each time, in [m]y opinion, the change has helped our Nation and its economic strength.

  Jimmy Carter

  Jobs, Labor Force, Salary

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• These teenagers [that drop out of school to take the higher wage jobs] take jobs that would go to unskilled adults, making it harder for those adults to make the transition from welfare to work.

  Greg Mankiw

  Jobs, Teenager, School

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• People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream-- to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living wage.

  Joan Bauer

  Dream, People, Quality

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• Very few restaurant workers could even dream of eating in the restaurants they work in. Many do not make a living wage.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Dream, Eating, Restaurants

  "A 'Brutally Honest' Taste Of Anthony Bourdain's Hunger Tour At Foxwoods". Interview with Leeanne Griffin, www.courant.com. September 26, 2016.

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• If a man or a woman puts in an honest day's work, they should to be able to earn a living wage.

  Richard Codey

  Men, Able, Honest

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• Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Money, Eggs, Giving

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• I believe increasing minimum wage it`s not just the minimum wage, it`s a living wage.

  Alison Lundergan Grimes

  Believe, Minimum Wage, I Believe

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• The ultimate object of education should be, Gandhi said, to help create not only a balanced and harmonious individual but also a balanced and harmonious society where true justice prevails, where there is no unnatural division between the haves and the have-nots, and where everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to live and the right to freedom.

  Arun Manilal Gandhi

  Educational, Justice, Society

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• This mad rush for wealth must cease and the labourer must be assured not only of a living wage but, also a daily task that is not mere drudgery.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Daily Tasks, Mad, Wealth

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.115, A&C Black

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• [Martin Luther King, Jr.] would want us to celebrate him, his birth, and his legacy by acting upon his agenda, by realizing the dream, by making the minimum wage a living wage, by having not just family and medical leave, but paid sick leave for our workers, [and] by having quality, affordable child care so that our families, the power of women can be unleashed in our economy and in our society.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Dream, Kings, Children

  "Pelosi Remarks at 50th Anniversary of March on Washington Rally". pelosi.house.gov. August 26, 2013.

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• Leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do not only to our environment but to our institutions.

  Danny Glover

  Mother, Health, Ideas

  Interview with Sarah van Gelder, www.yesmagazine.org. March 31, 2001.

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• I don't know if I ever mentioned back in 2002 we fought our way into a governor's debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda: cut the military, put the dollars into true security here at home, provide healthcare as a human right, raise wages which needed to be living wages, green our energy system, equal marriage? - we were the only ones talking about it back in 2002.

  Jill Stein

  Military, Home, Cutting

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• It is for the State to take care that the economic conditions are such that the normal man who is not defective in mind or body or will can be useful labor feed, house, and clothe himself and his family. The "right to work" and the "right to a living wage" are just as valid as the rights of person or property.

  Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

  Men, Rights, House

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