Quotes About Poverty

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

The minimum wage can play a vital role in lifting hard-working families above the poverty line.

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.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who fight and die.

Millions of Americans do essential work but are not paid a living wage.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs aren't paying enough to keep families out of poverty.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.

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.

Mr. Speaker, the time for an increase in the minimum wage has not just arrived; it is long overdue.

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.

Being unemployed - or working at minimum wage - is rough in the best of circumstances.

In Cambodia, education is really a luxury, and many kids are thrown into work as early as possible. This means they can help support their parents, as often the parents don't even earn a living wage.

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.

Catholics want what other Americans want: access to health care and jobs that pay a living wage. They want to send their kids to good schools. They want something done about poverty.

I want to wage war against illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, unfair competition, communitarianism, delinquency.

Thousands of Ohio families are going deeper and deeper in debt just trying to pay their heating bills, fill prescriptions, and buy groceries. The current minimum wage is simply not enough.

Today, the Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years. Let me repeat: The Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years.

Because so many employers refuse to pay their workers a wage on which they can live - most Britons languishing below the poverty line are in work - the state has to spend billions of pounds a year on in-work benefits.

I don't see the minimum wage as a fight between capital and labor, between persistent small businesses and diligent employees. I think offering New Mexicans a pathway out of poverty helps all of us, no matter which side of the check you sign.

When I recently spent a night at a homeless shelter, I was dismayed that members of the middle class had moved in and that earning above the minimum wage did not protect adults from having to share a room with dozens of others.

I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

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?

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.