A Quote by Jackie Speier

Working 40 hours a week used to mean a minimum standard of living and a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder to the middle class. — © Jackie Speier
Working 40 hours a week used to mean a minimum standard of living and a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder to the middle class.
Standing athwart ineffective, feel-good legislation shouting, 'Stop!' is seen as a betrayal of those struggling to get their footing on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Yet raising the minimum wage hacks the lowest rungs off the ladder altogether. But economic logic doesn't wash with liberals who are intent on inflaming class warfare.
The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.
Oftentimes when you have the federal government or others step in and start to raise minimum wage, what happens is you take away or reduce some people's opportunity to grab the bottom rung of the economic ladder to get the opportunities and the skills that you need to move up that economic ladder.
For 40 years, the American middle class has been disappearing. Millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages despite a huge increase in technology and productivity. And what we have seen during that period is a massive transfer of trillions of dollars from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent of America
I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.
Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
I'm suggesting that, until America takes care of its debt, untangles the housing mess and gets unemployment under control, we all commit to working six days a week. Yep, move the standard 35-40 hour work week right up to 48 hours.
To improve the standard of living for working folks, we have to raise the minimum wage and empower workers to fight for their interests in an economic and political system that's stacked against them.
Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
By the end of the first month of the 1995 session, each senator will have made more money than any person who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage for the entire year.
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.
I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It's not a big deal. Work doesn't hurt anybody. I'm all for not allowing a 12-year-old to work 40 hours. But a 12-year-old working eight to 10 hours a week or a 14-year-old working 12 to 15 hours a week is not bad.
A person working 45 hours per week averages 44% more income than someone working 40 hours per week. That's 44% more income for 13% more time.
How can you compare my life to any other MEP? I mean, come on, it's crackers, isn't it? Look, other MEPs do five days a week in Brussels and pop home for weekends. I'm working seven bloody days a week, all the hours God sends. If you include the socialising, it's over 100 hours a week.
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.
We're bankrupting our country and we have an empire that we're trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year. And the standard of living is going down today. It's going down and the middle class is hurting because of the monetary policy. When you destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.
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