Quote

I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine.

If you've got unemployment, low pay, that was just too bad. But that was the system. That was the sort of economy and philosophy against which I was fighting in the 1930s.

I make a lot of money. I can take a pay cut. All my friends are taking pay cuts that are in the unions, that are - that are farming in Alabama or whatever it is. I can surely take a pay cut, too, not cutting down my show or - or the people that work for me, I can take a pay cut.

I thought I was answering a question that I had heard that was about increasing the minimum wage - would I consider that. So let me just go on record and say this: I am not for decreasing the minimum wage. I did not say that and that is not something I would consider.

I am in favor of high wages and agree that the higher the wages, the stronger the evidence of prosperity, provided (and that is the important point) they are so naturally, by the effectiveness of industry, and not in consequence of an inflated currency or any artificial regulation.

Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.

In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.

When we lift the wage floor, it not only betters the lives of those whose wages are directly affected, it also lifts the economy as a whole.

The Keynesian prescription for unemployment rests on the persistence of a 'money illusion' among workers, i.e., on the belief that while, through unions and government, they will keep money wage rates from falling, they will also accept a fall in real wage rates via higher prices.