Wage Labour Quotes

The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times. ~ David Harvey

To say that "the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital", means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased. ~ Karl Marx

Nor can wage labour exist unless hired by capital. ~ Anonymous

The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour. ~ David Harvey

The essential difference between a society based on slave-labour and one based on wage-labour lies, Marx says, only in the manner in which this surplus-labour is extracted from the real producer, the worker. ~ Anonymous

Economically, the key flaw in the high-wage argument is that it confuses wage rates with labor costs - and labor costs with total costs. Wage rates are measured per hour of work. Labor costs are measured per unit of output. Total costs include not only the cost of labor but also the cost of capital, raw materials, transportation, and other things needed to produce output and bring the finished product to market. ~ Anonymous

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. ~ Willa Cather

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table. ~ Gyles Brandreth

I was fifteen when I left school. And what did I get to show for my ten years in the British education system? A piece of paper which said:

John Osbourne attended Birchfield Road Secondary Modern.
Signed, Mr Oldham (Headmaster)

That was f**king it. Not a single qualification. Nothing. I had two career choices: manual labour or manual labour. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on.

We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one.

We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book Nickel and Dimed describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered.

So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have? ~ Bill Maher

We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live in poverty ~ Barack Obama

Traditional progressive bread and butter economic issues are the heart of the solution. It's about ensuring decent jobs with a good wage. It's about ensuring a free public education in all the communities of America, whether they are in the shiny new affluent suburbs or the crumbling old schools of the older suburbs and cities. It's about ensuring a system where all Americans have access to health care, instead of a steadily declining share of our population. ~ Paul Wellstone

Denis Healey refused to contribute an article to the 'Guardian' about his intentions, and was punished by the electorate - and then all Labour MPs - for his presumption in assuming they already knew everything about him. He became famously the best prime minister we never had. Perhaps. ~ Simon Hoggart

It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war. ~ Sholom Aleichem

The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him. ~ Plutarch

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred. ~ Margaret Visser

Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists - and we all love the red squirrel. But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again - Danny Alexander. ~ Harriet Harman

Labour as long liu'd, pray as even dying.
[Labor as long-lived, pray as ever dying.] ~ George Herbert

At any point in the world's history most architecture is going to be bad but I think there's been a collective mentality since the late Conservative years - the end of Thatcher/start of Major and certainly continued throughout New Labour and continuing now - that new is necessarily better, so there is this neophilia which isn't the vanguard of progress, it's just the vanguard of the construction industry enjoying itself. ~ Jonathan Meades

As president I would actually name the enemy, radical Islamic terrorists. We've got a president [ Barack Obama] who wants to apologize for America and wants to criticize medieval Christian and wants to wage war on junk food. He won't even say the words "radical Islamic terrorists." ~ Bobby Jindal

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason ~ H.L. Mencken

The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life. ~ Roy Jenkins

In a civilization of wage slaves, where people seek to survive more than to live, mountaineering is an enigma. ~ Erhard Loretan; Jean Amman

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. ~ Russ Carnahan

You can't receive a living wage unless you work. ~ Mark Winne

You were a town with one pay phone and someone else was using it.
You were an ATM temporarily unable to dispense cash.
You were an outdated link and the server was down.
You were invisible to the naked eye.
You were the two insect parts per million allowed in peanut butter.
You were a car wash that me as dirty as when I pulled in.
You were twenty rotting bags of rice in the hold of a cargo plane sitting on the runway in a drought-riddled country.
You were one job opening for two hundred applicants and you paid minimum wage.
You were grateful for my submission but you just couldn't use it.
You weren't a Preferred Provider.
You weren't giving any refunds.
You weren't available for comment.
Your grave wasn't marked so I wandered the cementary for hours, part of the grass, part of the crumbling stones. ~ Kim Addonizio

Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry ... to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart ... Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered. ~ John Berger

We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage. ~ Iris Dement

And I would not blame you if you still asked, Why bother to make contact with kindred spirits you never see and may never hear from, who perhaps do not even exist except in your hopes? Why spend ten years in an apprenticeship to fiction only to discover that this society so little values what you do that it won't pay you a living wage for it? ~ Wallace Stegner

You have to be very rich to afford Labour, with 66 tax rises since they came in power. ~ John Redwood

One of the reasons that Social Security is in so much trouble is that the only funding stream comes from people who get a wage. The people who get wages is declining dramatically. Most of the income in this country is made by people at the top who get dividends and - and capital gains. ~ Mike Huckabee

Good news: it's Christmas morning.
Bad news: I have to work on labour ward.
Worse news: my phone goes off. It's my registrar. I didn't set my alarm and now they're wondering where the hell I am.
Even worse news: I'm asleep in my car. It takes me a while to establish where I am or why.
Good news: it seems I fell asleep after my shift last night and I'm already at work, in the hospital car park. ~ Adam Kay

We have a great objective - the light on the hill - which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for ... ~ Ben Chifley

As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along. ~ Julia Gillard

It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages? ~ William Booth

Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids - well.But none of that happens unless there's a political revolution. And it's not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media. ~ Bernie Sanders

If you think about $7.25 an hour, that's $290 a week. It's inhumane to have that kind of wage. ~ Jeff Greene

It's very common to implement mob grazing and double your production for a per-acre capitalisation investment ... because it doesn't take any more corraling, no more electricity, rent, machinery or labour to double your production on an existing place. ~ Joel Salatin

I enjoyed your book. You are a descriptive writer who paints well with pen in hand. Your story had a bit of everything....suspense, humor, history, and romance. Most of your main characters have some redeeming qualities about them. I like that.
I know you are working on your second book, and I am looking forward to reading it!
This was certainly a labour of love on your part, and I thank you!
Josie Angod ~ Josie Angod

I've said in the primary race repeatedly that a Labour Party that I lead would be a true red Labour Party, be very clear about its social democratic roots and its social democratic agenda. ~ David Cunliffe

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual. ~ Edward Gibbon

Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for by the starvation of his children
that torture is something that private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake. ~ David Lloyd George

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

Not all the labour of the earth Is done by hardened hands. ~ Will Carleton

We should begin to remind people they are always after your money and if you are on something around average earnings you really don't have that spare capacity to pay for all these follies that Labour keep spending their money on. ~ John Redwood

When it comes to building wealth, the most powerful force you have on your side is time. As the days and years pass, the opportunity to build wealth by leveraging time slowly dwindles. The idea for this book came from the realization that often times kids start working their first job at sixteen, likely just a minimum wage, or near-minimum wage, job, but they haven't been taught how to accumulate wealth. ~ Bill Edgar

In the anarchist milieu, communism, individualism, collectivism, mutualism and all the intermediate and eclectic programmes are simply the ways considered best for achieving freedom and solidarity in economic life; the ways believed to correspond more closely with justice and freedom for the distribution of the means of production and the products of labour among men. Bakunin was an anarchist, and he was a collectivist, an outspoken enemy of communism because he saw in it the negation of freedom and, therefore, of human dignity. ~ Errico Malatesta

Dead labour is far harder to control than the live stuff was, which is why the enlightenment project of interring gothic superstition was the royal road to the first truly vampiric civilization, in which death alone comes to rule. ~ Nick Land

Women deserve better than organizations bearing the names of racist rapists funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains. These wealthy middle aged white men tell us what to do with our bodies while they wage wars and kill other people's babies. ~ Sonya Renee Taylor

The work under our labour grows, Luxurious by restraint. ~ John Milton

Many people supported the Conservatives because of David Cameron, while many people supported Labour despite Ed Miliband. Deteriorating opinions of Cameron will therefore have a bigger impact on the Conservatives' vote share than worsening views of Miliband would have on Labour's. ~ Michael Ashcroft