A Quote by Joseph Stiglitz

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

Quote Topics

Earn Low Minimum Minimum Wage More Most People Poor Poor People Problem Than Wage Wages Working

Quote Author

Joseph Stiglitz
American - Economist
Born: February 9, 1943

I want people to make a lot more than $9. $9 is not enough. The problem is that if you can't do that by mandating it in the minimum wage laws. Minimum wage laws never worked in terms of helping the middle class attain more prosperity.

Marco Rubio

The problem with one single minimum wage is that you don't allow for younger people, who are less skilled and maybe more easily pushed out of the job market, or that the minimum wage should vary for different regions.

Zanny Minton Beddoes

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.

Joni Ernst

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

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.

Mark Dayton

The minimum wage is not something that you want to stay on as a permanent basis. For example, if you have a minimum wage job, you don't stay there 20 or 30 years. You don't put your children through college working on minimum wage.

John Raese

Sharp increases in the minimum wage rate are also inflationary. Frequently workers paid more than the minimum gauge their wages relative to it. This is especially true of those workers who are paid by the hour. An increase in the minimum therefore increases their demands for higher wages in order to maintain their place in the structure of wages. And when the increase is as sharp as it is in H.R. 7935, the result is sure to be a fresh surge of inflation.

Richard M. Nixon

Any way you slice it, increasing the minimum wage in Michigan... is likely to make it more difficult for the working poor to find jobs. ...those who most need the work will have a harder time finding it.

Paul Kersey

But can we please stop insisting that if low-wage workers earn a little bit more, unemployment will skyrocket and the economy will collapse? There is no evidence for it. 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.

Nick Hanauer

In working on any one problem, such as higher minimum wages, so many other issues come into play, such as some businesses possibly closing down, thus creating fewer jobs and more unemployment and incentivizing companies to import more goods from abroad, which leads to even less employment at home, and so on.

Philip Kotler

The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.

Cornel West

Instead of raising the minimum wage, let's lower taxes for the working poor.

Kathy Szeliga

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Margaret Sanger

If a market exists for low-paid work, then we should think about how we can make this type of work more attractive by providing government assistance. Of course, the wage-earner must be able to live off of his wages. We will not allow poverty wages or dumping wages. But the wage earner can receive a combined wage that includes both his actual wages and a government subsidy.

Angela Merkel

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?