Wage Determination Quotes

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?

There is nothing to arbitrate. Workers have nothing to do with the amount of wages they shall receive. This is solely the business of the company.

Hence as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the Administration of public affairs.

The payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

You can keep raising it, but at some point, everybody who believes in a minimum wage will say, "No, wait a minute. That's too much," and at that point, you have demonstrated that that there's no market relationship. You're just talking emotion. You're just talking "fairness." You're just talking being nice, and that's not how the market works. People aren't paid a wage because they're being nice to, or because it's fair. In the market, the market rules.

If every other store in town is paying workers $9 an hour, one offering $8 will find it hard to hire anyone - perhaps not when unemployment is high, but certainly in normal times. Robust competition is a powerful force helping to ensure that workers are paid what they contribute to their employers' bottom lines.

The policy of letting the free market determine the height of wage rates is the only reasonable and successful full-employment policy.

Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.

When it comes to jobs, jobs are just like products in the sense that the free market operates and sees that somebody gets paid what they're worth.

Wages are determined by the bitter struggle between capitalist and worker.

A demand for commodities is not a demand for labor. The demand for labor is determined by the amount of capital directly devoted to the remuneration of labor: the demand for commodities simply determines in what direction labor shall be employed.

We know, in other words, the general conditions in which what we call, somewhat misleadingly, an equilibrium will establish itself: but we never know what the particular prices or wages are which would exist if the market were to bring about such an equilibrium.

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold... has its natural and its market price.

We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.

The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ.

It is not by the absolute quantity of produce obtained by either class, that we can correctly judge of the rate of profit, rent, and wages, but by the quantity of labour required to obtain that produce.

The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.

In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

To the second end, we hold that minimum wage commissions should be established in the Nation and in each State to inquire into wages paid in various industries and to determine the standard which the public ought to sanction as a minimum; and we believe that, as a present installment of what we hope for in the future, there should be at once established in the Nation and its several States minimum standards for the wages of women, taking the present Massachusetts law as a basis from which to start and on which to improve.

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

All wages are based primarily on productive power. Anything else would be charity.