146 Low Wage Quotes
Following is our list of low wage quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about wage.
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Famous Low Wage Quotes
I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment. — Sam Walton
The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others. — Robert Owen
Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. — Pope Leo XIII
Blame is a lazy man's wages. — Danish proverb
A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it. — Bernie Sanders
The real minimum wage is zero. — Thomas Sowell
There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer — Martin Luther King, Jr.
By tying minimum wage to money supply, the poor's income would rise and fall with the rise and fall in money supply. — Max Keiser
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills. — Milton Friedman
They have ruined our lives and driven down our wages tenfold. Therefore, we should not be surprised that they are leaving us 45 percent poor and 10 percent extreme poverty. — Javier Milei
An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist. — Fiorello H. La Guardia
It was a Conservative government that in 2016 introduced the national living wage, giving Britain's lowest-paid workers the biggest pay rise in 20 years. — Rishi Sunak
Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women. — Anna Howard Shaw
The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs. This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy. — Jerry Brown
Most people work just hard enough not to get fired, and get paid just enough money not to quit. — George Carlin
Short Low Wage Quotes
- Income seldom exceeds personal development. — Jim Rohn
- Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living; profits make you a fortune. — Jim Rohn
- We always strive to be the best in the wage package. — James Sinegal
- Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration — Abraham Lincoln
- I'm from where your hustle determines your salary. — Rick Ross
- Here we all live in a state of ambitious poverty. — Juvenal
Low Pay Quotes
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. — Thomas Sowell
Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system. — Charlie Munger
The way we make money as a group is that we don't pay a lot for anything, and most of the stocks we buy have low expectations. — Joel Greenblatt
Raising the congestion charge won't necessarily make a difference. Rather than increasing the amount you pay in congestion charge, we should be thinking about an ultra low emission zone. We should penalise those cars who are the biggest polluters and reward cars that don't, like electric cars. — Sadiq Khan
People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer. — Bernie Sanders
Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay. — David Korten
Obviously, people with low or even moderate incomes could not afford such savings rates, and even diligent savings from their low wages would not be enough to pay for either retirement or healthcare. — William Greider
Government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what's the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It's nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills. — Walter E. Williams
The thing that drives me crazy is when comics say 'I have low self-esteem.' No you don't. You're standing on stage asking people to pay. You don't play an instrument. You want people to pay to hear what's in your mind. You don't have low self-esteem. You might have other problems. — Colin Quinn
Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough. — Arne Duncan
Wage Quotes
I don't give a damn what queers do, and don't give a damn what Christians do. Just get the hell out of my way because I want to live my life and I don't want the government sucking 60% of my wages off my ass. — Alex Jones
Some jobs pay better, some jobs smell better, and some jobs have no business being treated like careers. But work is never the enemy, regardless of the wage. Because somewhere between the job and the paycheck, there’s still a thing called opportunity, and that’s what people need to pursue. — Mike Rowe
Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress. — A. Philip Randolph
Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America. — Bernie Sanders
Masonic labor is purely a labor of love. He who seeks to draw Masonic wages in gold and silver will be disappointed. The wages of a Mason are in the dealings with one another; sympathy begets sympathy, kindness begets kindness, helpfulness begets helpfulness, and these are the wages of a Mason. — Benjamin Franklin
Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success. — Ernest Shackleton
NAFTA recognizes the reality of today's economy - globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity. — John F. Kerry
If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging? — Ho Chi Minh
War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not be fended off; but smitten down. You may then spare him every exaction, relinquish every gain, but „til then he must be struck incessantly and remorselessly. — Alfred Thayer Mahan
It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. — Henry Ford
Minimum Wage Quotes
I heard Russell Simmons say that, 'people have million dollar dreams with a minimum wage work ethic.' Basically, everybody wanna be rich but don't nobody wanna work for it. — Yo Gotti
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
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. — Max Keiser
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. — Max Keiser
It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label. — Barack Obama
In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women. — Bernie Sanders
I was making almost minimum wage on 'The Young and the Restless.' But it was my first job, so I accepted my first quote. I had a great time on it, and it obviously led me to better things. — Eva Longoria
So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. — Paul Krugman
I think the minimum wage will be the centerpiece of the State of Union. I think it should be the centerpiece of the State of the Union. And it should be very focused on that because, as you said, Republicans in the rest of the country are for it. — Robert Gibbs
You can't have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic. — Zig Ziglar
Wage-earners Quotes
In antiquity slaves were, in all honesty called slaves. In the middle ages, they took the name of serfs. Nowadays they are called wage earners. — Mikhail Bakunin
If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Upton Sinclair
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. — Abraham Lincoln
We will never have real safety and security for wage earners unless we provide for safety and security for the wage payers and wage savers. — William J. H. Boetcker
The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner - most likely a woman - responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children. — Thomas Perez
Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate. — Andrew Carnegie
The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box. — Christine Pelosi
Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas. — Gunther Grass
Do not mistake a crowd of big wage-earners for the leisure class. — Clive Bell
Fair Wage Quotes
I had watched for many years and seen how a few rich families held much of Argentina's wealth and power in their hands. So Peron and the government brought in an eight hour working day , sickness pay and fair wages to give poor workers a fair go . — Evita Peron
Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature. — David Ricardo
When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week's wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam's fair trade campaign helps right this wrong. — Colin Firth
The difference between the very wealthy and the working poor has grown. We raise that minimum wage and we move forward with the vision of this president that we have, which is everyone pays their fair share. — Barbara Boxer
A fair day's wages for a fair day's work. — Thomas Carlyle
American workers won't be able to compete fairly for jobs until companies have to pay higher wages in countries like China and India. — Andy Stern
We have to get very militant with some of these employers to say there's no shortcuts, our people have a right to a fair day's wage for a fair day's pay, and we've got to get that done. And that's going to happen. — James P. Hoffa
I was advocating for world peace, but I was waging a violent war against my own body. I was speaking about poverty and starvation, but I was eating more than my fair share. I was a hypocrite. — Bryant H. McGill
Saying I want to pay women a fair wage is doing something and saying young black people deserve not to be called super predators but to be engaged from an economic standpoint that gives them an equal opportunity says doing something.I`m tired of talking. — Killer Mike
I hold it to be our duty to see that the wage-worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, shall get their fair share of business prosperity. But it either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from it. — Theodore Roosevelt
Living Wage Quotes
The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages. — David Ricardo
The Living-Wage Campaign at Harvard is like a Boston winter: you know it's going to strike, but wonder only when and how hard. — Vivek Ramaswamy
I love how Mother Theresa said she wouldn't attend an anti-war rally but if there was a peace rally to call her. So I realized it's not about waging a war against everybody's disease and diagnosis but rather about helping them live. — Bernie Siegel
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. — Friedrich Engels
Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids - well. But none of that happens unless there's a political revolution. And it's not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media. — Bernie Sanders
The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ. — John L. Lewis
Almost all people suffer some form of intense inner pain at some times in their lives. The suffering might be depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or suicidal thoughts and it results from the battles we wage against our thoughts as we futilely try to get rid of our historie. — Steven C. Hayes
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
Stop saying athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O'Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Minsk. — Bill Maher
Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies. — June Jordan
Raising Minimum Wage Quotes
It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels. — Jon Corzine
To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise. — Sayings
Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages. — Matt Gonzalez
Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio. — Sherrod Brown
Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938. — Bill Pascrell
Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. — Russ Carnahan
The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise. — Jim Clyburn
We have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women's work. — Hillary Clinton
If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine. — Marco Rubio
Raising the minimum wage a lot across the board would make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it's an indispensable part of solving the problem. — Nick Hanauer
High-wage Quotes
To me, the labor movement was never just a way of getting higher wages. What appealed to me was the spiritual side of a great cause that created fellowship. You wanted the girl or the man who worked beside you to be treated just as well as you were, and an injury to one was the concern of all. — Rose Schneiderman
The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. — Milton Friedman
Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right. — Jim Harrison
If US per capita income continues to grow at a rate of 1.5 percent a year, the country will have plenty of money to finance comfortable retirements and high-quality healthcare for all citizens, including those at the bottom of the wage ladder. — William Greider
Our economy continues to struggle with slow economic growth, high unemployment and stagnant wages. "Obama care's" raising costs. That's making it harder for small businesses to hire. In short, it's a train wreck. — John Boehner
What we must seek is a plan by which the men will receive high wages when the employers are receiving high prices for the product. — Charles M. Schwab
I know that everybody who supported Bernie Sanders supported him because they believe that college debt is too high. They believe that the minimum wage needs to be increased. They believe that we have to take on climate action. — Keith Ellison
In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor force will work for the lowest wage. — Robert Kuttner
You can't tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don't mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don't leave anything over. — Henry Ford
Henry Ford, in a sense, was the first Keynesian. He paid his assembly workers high wages so they could afford to buy his cars. — Robert Kuttner
People Writing About Low Wage
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Jim Rohn |
802 | 20336 |
 Sam Walton |
101 | 2144 |
 Robert Owen |
28 | 1176 |
 Pope Leo XIII |
59 | 579 |
 Danish proverb |
29 | 564 |
 Bernie Sanders |
655 | 11379 |
More Low Wage Quotes
In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto. — Bartholomew Roberts
If you're graduating from high school, and you come from a lower-income family, you're effectively given two options. One is to get a four-year college degree; two is to work at a low-wage job, potentially for the rest of your life. We've got to do better on that front. We have to provide more options. — James David Vance
The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st - When they are neglected in infancy 2nd - When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd - When they are paid low wages for their labour. — Robert Owen
The theoretically unrestricted right to develop power, to wage war against other states, is antisocial and is doubly dangerous, because the state as a mass entity represents a low moral and intellectual level. — Christian Lous Lange
People understand that the economy is rigged. They're working longer hours for low wages. All new income and wealth, almost all, is going to the people on top. — Bernie Sanders
a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class. ... You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $65 billion family fortune? — Barbara Ehrenreich
Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working. — Joseph Stiglitz
I will tell you is the antidote to [Donald] Trump is a very strong progressive agenda that says, yes, I know you`re angry. And you know what? You should be angry because you`re working longer hours for low wages. You have a right to be bitter and you have a right to be that. — Bernie Sanders
Every three weeks before an election the TV ads expressing great concern about our trade policy and the loss of jobs to China and other low-wage countries. And then it's forgotten about the day after the election. — Bernie Sanders
An increase in the relative price of products from the low wage manufacturers in Asia and Latin America will also make those products less attractive to American consumers. — Martin Feldstein
This [Gang of Eight bill (S.744)] is far, far too many low-skilled workers that are going to take jobs and pull down wages of people unemployed and underemployed right now. — Jeff Sessions
To actually unleash an entire generation to do what they've already been trained to do. They've done the work, they have the degrees, they have the passion, but they're working two or three part-time low-wage, temporary jobs just to keep a roof over their heads. — Jill Stein
The rapid growth in many of our suburbs has spawned a booming construction industry eager to hire low wage immigrants who gladly fill these jobs, many of them happy to be paid in cash, free of federal and state taxes. — Spencer Bachus
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. — Henry Hazlitt
To millennials, the Democratic Party is the party of endless debt, it is the party of low-wage jobs, it is the part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is the party of the KXL pipeline, which was only stopped because, you know, because we, the voters, you know, just worked our bones - you know, worked ourselves to the bone in order to stop it. — Jill Stein
On top of that she promises uncontrolled, low-skilled immigration that continues to reduce jobs and wages for American workers, and especially for African-American and Hispanic workers within our country. Our citizens. — Donald Trump
By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth. — Mark Krikorian
At a time when our country is waging two wars, approval ratings for Congress are at historic lows, unemployment is at a 70-year high and financial institutions have collapsed around us, I can't imagine anyone seriously opposing a National Day of Prayer. — Franklin Graham
Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc. — Henry Miller
Roman, remember that you shall rule the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to make peace the custom, to spare the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low. — Virgil
I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly. — Alice Walker
America isn't Congress. America isn't Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger. — Barack Obama
There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers. — Cesar Chavez
It seems to me both moral and practical that in the richest in nation in the world that someone working full time shouldn't live in poverty. And studies over the last 20 years in states where we have seen these minimum wage increases show there's no discernible impact on employment growth. In fact, what it does is line low-wage workers' pockets with higher wages. — Katrina vanden Heuvel
Donald Trump talks a good game on trade, but he's never lived it. He's lined his pockets by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries, and now he's talking about trade as if he actually means it? — Sherrod Brown
If workers are overworked, or companies hire temps at low wages, this fundamentally comes down to the quality of life for a person. It's bigger than wages. They should be able to spend time with their families. And if they're single, they should be able to have fun and not spend every day of their life working 12 to 15 hours a day and never get a chance to take care of their well-being. To me, that's part of living a good life. — Nina Turner
Jobs are pouring out of America; you see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places, low pay, low wages, mass instability overseas, no matter where you look. The middle east is a disaster. North Korea - we'll take care of it folks; we're going to take care of it all. I just want to let you know, I inherited a mess. — Donald Trump
We haven't had a recession for 25 years in Australia. It's partly because of our trade with China. China's been doing relatively well. So some of the tensions around a low-wage economy haven't quite happened here in the same way as they have in the United States. — Richard Glover
The jobs that have come back have been extremely insecure low-wage benefit poor temporary jobs. Young people are screwed. They don't have a way to pay off their debt. And when they discover that they could come out and vote Green to cancel that debt, that I am the one candidate who will bail out the students like we bailed out the crooks on Wall Street, then it becomes an irresistible motivation to actually come out and vote Green. — Jill Stein
There's one other element I just want to be sure to mention here: that is that there are 43 million young people who are locked into predatory student loan debt for whom there is no way out in the foreseeable future given the economy that we have: this predatory Wall Street driven financialized low-wage service industry economy. — Jill Stein
Raising the federal minimum wage won't just put more money in the pocket of low-income families - it also means they spend more money at the businesses in their neighborhoods. [Donald] Trump's against that as well. — Hillary Clinton
The vast majority (over 80 percent) of fast-food and similar low wage service jobs ( — David Rolf
When Obama boasts that it will be a huge boon to the economy to give amnesty to millions of low-wage workers, who won't pay income taxes but will need a lot of government services, remember: Obamacare was supposed to save money, too. — Ann Coulter
The TPP is another corporate-backed agreement that is the latest in a series of trade policies which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, pushed down wages for American workers and led to the decline of our middle class. We want American companies to create decent-paying jobs in America, not just low-wage countries like Vietnam, Malaysia or China. The TPP must be defeated. — Bernie Sanders
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