“Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude. All labor has dignity and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth... We have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.”

—  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Twitter Post https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1134631705153802241, (31 May 2019)
2019, Twitter Quotes (2019), May 2019

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude. All labor has dignity and the way that we give…" by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 45
American politician 1989

Related quotes

Bernie Sanders photo

“A $15 minimum wage once seemed impossible. Since then, 6 states raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. 29 states raised it above the national minimum of $7.25 an hour. Thanks to a strong grassroots movement, $15 has gone from laughable to inevitable.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/SenSanders (24 April 2019)
2010s, 2019, April 2019

Cory Booker photo

“There is great dignity in work – and in America, if you want to provide for your family, you should be able to find a full-time job that pays a fair wage. The federal jobs guarantee is an idea that demands to be taken seriously. Creating an employment guarantee would give all Americans a shot at a day’s work and, by introducing competition into the labor market, raise wages and improve benefits for all workers.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Salant, Jonathan D., 11 ways Cory Booker is wooing progressives as he eyes a run for president in 2020, https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/08/11_ways_booker_is_wooing_progressives_in_advance_of_1.html, nj.com, 21 August 2018, August 19, 2018]
2018

Ted Cruz photo

“If we stand together and choose freedom, our future will be brighter. Freedom will bring back jobs and raise wages. Freedom will lift people out of dependency to the dignity of work.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)

Henry Ford photo

“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.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“In a very real sense, every subsidy and privilege … is a form of slavery. Slavery, simply put, is the use of coercion to live off of someone else's labor. For example, consider the worker who pays $300 a month for a drug under patent, that would cost $30 in a free market. If he is paid $15 an hour, the eighteen hours he works every month to pay the difference are slavery. Every hour worked to pay usury on a credit card or mortgage is slavery. The hours worked to pay unnecessary distribution and marketing costs (comprising half of retail prices), because of subsidies to economic centralization, is slavery. Every additional hour someone works to meet his basic needs, because the state tilts the field in favor of the bosses and forces him to sell his labor for less than it is worth, is slavery. All these forms of slavery together probably amount to half our working hours. If we kept the full value of our labor, we could probably maintain current levels of consumption with a work week of twenty hours. As Bill Haywood said, for every man who gets a dollar he didn't sweat for, someone else sweated to produce a dollar he never received.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand (2002)

Ross Perot photo

“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor,…have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south…when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.”

Ross Perot (1930–2019) American businessman

1992 Presidential Debate, regarding the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Transcript http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/16/us/the-1992-campaign-transcript-of-2d-tv-debate-between-bush-clinton-and-perot.html

Gunnar Myrdal photo

“During the ’thirties the danger of being a marginal worker became increased by social legislation intended to improve conditions on the labor market. The dilemma, as viewed from the Negro angle is this: on the one hand, Negroes constitute a disproportionately large number of the workers in the nation who work under imperfect safety rules, in unclean and unhealthy shops, for long hours, and for sweatshop wages; on the other hand, it has largely been the availability of such jobs which has given Negroes any employment at all. As exploitative working conditions are gradually being abolished, this, of course, must benefit Negro workers most, as they have been exploited most—but only if they are allowed to keep their employment. But it has mainly been their willingness to accept low labor standards which has been their protection. When government steps in to regulate labor conditions and to enforce minimum standards, it takes away nearly all that is left of the old labor monopoly in the “Negro jobs.”
As low wages and sub-standard labor conditions are most prevalent in the South, this danger is mainly restricted to Negro labor in that region. When the jobs are made better, the employer becomes less eager to hire Negroes, and white workers become more eager to take the jobs from the Negroes.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 397

Boris Johnson photo

“Not even Mr Blair has been able to erode the unions conviction that we all have a “right” to a minimum wage… Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.”

Boris Johnson book Lend Me Your Ears

Lend Me Your Ears, p387
2000s, 2003

Johan Norberg photo

“As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century […. ] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run.”

Johan Norberg book In Defense of Global Capitalism

In Defense of Global Capitalism

Hillary Clinton photo

“We need more clean energy jobs and we have to do more to help small businesses. You know, the fastest-growing segment of small businesses are minority and women-owned small business, and we need to help businesses get started. We do need to raise the minimum wage and we have to guarantee equal pay for women.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Related topics