Wage Rates

Like other factors of production, labor is also valued according to its usefulness in satisfying human wants.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 177

In the long run the worker can never get more than the consumer allows.

Bureaucracy, p. 37

There is but one way toward an increase of real wage rates for all those eager to earn wages: the progressive accumulation of new capital and the improvement of technical methods of production which the new capital brings about. The true interests of labor coincide with those of business.

Bureaucracy, p. 112

The only means to raise wage rates permanently for all those eager to earn wages is to raise the productivity of labor by increasing the per-head quota of capital invested and improving the methods of production.

Planning for Freedom, p. 6

The buyers do not pay for the toil and trouble the worker took nor for the length of time he spent in working. They pay for the products.

Planning for Freedom, p. 151

The better the tools are which the worker uses in his job, the more he can perform in an hour, the higher is, consequently, his remuneration.

Planning for Freedom, p. 151

The height of wage rates is determined by the consumers’ appraisal of the value the worker’s labor adds to the value of the article available for sale.

Planning for Freedom, p. 190

It is not the Hollywood film corporation that pays the wages of a movie star; it is the people who pay admission to the movies. And it is not the entrepreneurs of a boxing match who pay the enormous demands of the prize fighters; it is the people who pay admission to the fight.

Economic Policy, p. 9–10

There is only one efficacious way toward a rise in real wage rates and an improvement of the standard of living of the wage earners: to increase the per-head quota of capital invested.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 464–65

Minimum wage rates, whether decreed and enforced by the government or by labor union pressure and violence, result in mass unemployment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 27