Quotes About Economics

I don't know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor.

Anyone who's tried to pay a heating bill, fill a prescription, or simply buy groceries knows all too well that the current minimum wage does not cut the mustard.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.

The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high.

Before the government decides to raise the minimum wage, it must consider the effects of the tax and benefits merry-go-round that affects the low-paid.

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.

I have no issue with raising minimum wage, but then the customer can't say to us, 'Why are you raising your prices?'

Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.

People will say 'how can you have a plane when your workers are on minimum wage?' I said 'but I don't set the minimum wage.' If the minimum wage would be the living wage, then the Government who set the rules should set it at the living wage. That's how I look at it.

Wage concessions are difficult to quantify, since their magnitude depends on many operating variables.

It is no small thing for an American to be able to go into a fast-food restaurant and to buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage - indeed, in the long sweep of history, this represents a remarkable achievement.

Even if we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, it's still hard to prosper on that wage.

We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us: this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I?

Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income.

In our modern world of interdependent nations, hardly any state can wage war successfully without raising loans and buying war materials of every kind in the markets of other nations.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.

You get paid more at McDonald's than you do under the existing minimum wage.

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.

It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.

My question becomes, 'If we want to empower people with higher pay, there are probably better ways to do it that are more enduring than simply a federal mandate on wage level.'

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

In the 1960s, a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.