A Quote by Walter E. Williams

Minimum-wage laws are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of racists.

Walter E. Williams

Quote Topics

Arsenal Laws Minimum Most Most Powerful Powerful Powerful Tool Tools Wage

Quote Author

Walter E. Williams
American - Economist
Born: June 30, 1936

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

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

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

Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him.

Murray Rothbard

The national minimum wage has not been increased in 9 years. By year's end, 21 States across America will have a minimum wage exceeding the Federal minimum wage.

Sherwood Boehlert

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.

Mike Ashley

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

If you're fighting against a minimum wage increase, you're fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage.

Frank Luntz

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

Thomas Sowell

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

Pramila Jayapal

I believe increasing minimum wage it`s not just the minimum wage, it`s a living wage.

Alison Lundergan Grimes

Why, when the economist gives advice to his society, is he so often cooly ignored? He never ceases to preach free trade, and protectionism is growing in the United States. He deplores the perverse effects of minimum wage laws, and the legal minimum is regularly raised each 3 or 5 years. He brands usury laws as a medieval superstition, but no state hurries to repeal its law.

George Stigler

[A] family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That's wrong. That's why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, 19 states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.

Barack Obama

The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.

Milton Friedman

Home Depot has never hired one human being for minimum wage, not one. We have always paid a premium over minimum wage.