Pay And Benefits Quotes & Sayings

According to the American Lung Association, the average smoker dies seven years earlier than the average nonsmoker, which means that smokers pay into Social Security and private pension funds for all of their working lives but then don't stick around very long to collect the benefits. — Charles Wheelan

A Congressional Budget Office report released as recent as June 2004 says the system will be able to pay full benefits until 2052, and 80 percent after that. — Grace Napolitano

Every regulatory speech on derivatives takes a bow to their hedging 'benefits.' Less publicly, regulators pay their respects to derivative profits, a blessed relief from the banks' troubled loans to less-developed countries, highly leveraged companies, and real estate swingers. — Carol Loomis

Europe is in an economic crisis. Germany is the wealthiest country in Europe and it benefits the most from Europe. However, the German public doesn't want to pay for what they see as Greek indolence and corruption. — George Friedman

It's fairness to say those who work hard, get up in the morning, cut their cloth - in other words 'we can only afford to have one or two children because we don't earn enough'. They pay their taxes and they want to know that the same kind of decision-making is taking place for those on benefits. — Iain Duncan Smith

Let's means-test benefits - let's means-test Social Security and Medicare and make the rich pay more for these benefits. — Rand Paul

Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay in your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so - pardon the pun - so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist. — Stephen King

I have calculated the total number of hours
we spend sleeping beside each other in a week
and I wanted to tell you it could be considered
a full-time job. We could be eligible for healthcare
benefits, could probably even pay for a mortgage
by now. I remind myself of this, in daylight, when
I miss you and cannot reach across the bed
for the comforting filling and refilling
of your chest. Such a strange affair
we are having on each other; these hours
that I have not lost but do not remember.
This cannot be the best of love: to drool
on someone's collarbone or inhale an elbow to
the jaw or be woken by the most ungraceful sounds
of the body. But what is it if not the softening
of grips? A letting go of. Your heart
finally slowly that stubborn, lonely march. — Sierra DeMulder

Since 1935, this has been a pay-as-you-go system, and I always believed when I first started talking about Social Security that there was a little box that had my name on it and it had my benefits for when I retired. That is not true. — Judy Biggert

I think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value. — D. Patrick Miller

It's ironic that retailers and restaurants live or die on customer service, yet their employees have some of the lowest pay and worst benefits of any industry. That's one reason so many retail experiences are mediocre for the public. — Howard Schultz

Back in 2008, unable to come to terms with its many creditors, Vallejo had declared bankruptcy. Eighty percent of the city's budget - and the lion's share of the claims that had thrown it into bankruptcy - were wrapped up in the pay and benefits of public safety workers. Relations between the police and the firefighters, on the one hand, and the citizens, on the other, were at historic lows. The public safety workers thought that the city was out to screw them on their contracts; the citizenry thought that the public safety workers were using fear as a tool to extort money from them. The local joke was that "P.D." stands for "Pay or Die." The city council meetings had become exercises in outrage: at one, a citizen arrived and tossed a severed pig's head onto the floor. — Michael Lewis

In these times of the 'Great Recession', we shouldn't be trying to shift the benefits of wealth behind some curtain. We should be celebrating and encouraging people to make as much money as they can. Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don't. I find it patriotic. — Mark Cuban

How can we share the gifts of nature? By sharing the monetary value that human beings assign to nature. The fundamental thing we need to abolish is the mechanism by which people unfairly profit from land. The solution is simple: Property owners merely need to pay the communities from which they receive benefits through their exclusive use of land the exact market value of the benefits they receive.

When land users pay significant proportions of the rental value of land to their local communities, they rightfully reimburse their communities. These can be called Community Land Contributions.

Unlike, land value taxes, CLCs relate to the rental value (which subsumes all natural and social benefits) not land price. Also, a tax implies land users are being taxed on their land values while CLCs emphasize that land is a community good. — Martin Adams

They keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job, because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does. — Sharron Angle

The Korean private market had unbundled education down to the one in-school variable that mattered most: the teacher. It was about as close to a pure meritocracy as it could be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers were free agents. They did not need to be certified. They didm;t have benefits or even guaranteed base salary; their pay was determined by how many students signed up for their classes, by their students' test-score growth, and, in many hagwons, by the results of satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. — Amanda Ripley

Look back over the last hundred years and you'll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income - as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 - the nation as a whole grew faster, and median wages surged. The basic bargain ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. We created that virtuous cycle in which an ever-growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. On the other hand, during periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion - as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day - growth slowed, median wages stagnated, and we suffered giant downturns. — Robert B. Reich

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. — Jill Lepore

Research has shown that middle-income wage earners would benefit most from a large reduction in corporate tax rates. The corporate tax is not a rich-man's tax. Corporations don't even pay it. They just pass the tax on in terms of lower wages and benefits, higher consumer prices, and less stockholder value. — Lawrence Kudlow

Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accept the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay-and claims a halo for his dishonesty. — Robert A. Heinlein

I argued last year on my shared blog that selling the right to immigrate would be the best approach to legal immigration. Among other benefits, the revenue from immigrants' payments could reduce taxes. Paying for the right to immigrate would also negate the argument that immigrants get a free ride when they gain health care and other benefits. Moreover, making immigrants pay would attract the type of immigrants who came much earlier in American history: young men and women who are reasonably skilled and want to make a long-term commitment to the United States. — Gary Becker

What's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it. — Peter Drucker

There's no denying the benefits of the Internet. But electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, creates the hole in the boat - draining our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative. — Richard Louv

One has to explain to people that the EU in this form is the answer both to 1945 and to the 21st century, in a dramatically altered world with new heavyweights, and that Germany benefits from the continued integration of Europe in political, economic and societal ways. And, of course, that means the Germans will have to pay. — Peer Steinbruck

The free market is 'socialism' for the rich: the public pays the costs and the rich get the benefit - markets for the poor and plenty of state protection for the rich. — Noam Chomsky

Improving the outlook for U.S workers isn't about creating millions of minimum-wage jobs. It is about creating sustainable, skilled employment that allows Americans to earn a fair wage with benefits that allows them to pay for housing and food on the table and sustain a middle-class lifestyle. — James P. Hoffa

So vast a sum, receiving all the protection and benefits of the government, without bearing its proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the taxes ... I would suggest the taxation of all property equally. — Ulysses S. Grant

Benefits are rarely made public in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where companies must report the pay and options that their five highest-paid executives receive. — Alex Berenson

It's not reasonable for companies that have chief executives and board members who are paid very considerable sums to subsidise low pay through in-work benefits. — Boris Johnson

In the case of the Irish banks, the private bonds that they had purchased were uninsured. In the case of Greek state bonds, their buyers also knew that these were Greek law contracts, meaning that they could be given a haircut (written down) by a future stressed Greek government. This is precisely why the interest rates were higher than in Germany. Higher risk, higher rewards. As long as the gamble was paying off, the German bankers reaped benefits that they shared with no one. But when the gambles turned bad, as Irish banks and the Greek state failed, they demanded that the taxpayers of Greece and Ireland pay up, as if they had bought insurance from them. — Yanis Varoufakis

You must provide more benefits and fewer costs and risks than the other choices your manager has. Most people seeking a promotion pay more attention to promising benefits than they do to alleviating costs and mitigating risks, but all three are critical in any decision to promote from within. — Anonymous

When you start talking about the patients' bill of rights and all the benefits that are in there, people agree with all that. What they don't know is how are you going to pay for it. — Bart Stupak

Coal research and development provides huge benefits for the nation, and pay for itself many times over through taxes flowing back to the Treasury from expanded economic activity. — Tim Holden

As soon as I wake up I pay homage to the Buddha, and I try to prepare my mind to be more altruistic, more compassionate, during the day to come so I can be of benefit to beings. Then I do physical exersice - I walk on a treadmill. — Dalai Lama

I respect the state workers and I respect their unions, but we simply can't afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality. — Andrew Cuomo

These days, government employees are better off in almost every area: pay, benefits, time off, and security, on top of working fewer hours. They can thrive even in a down economy. — Mortimer Zuckerman

Every year, in every state across the country, politicians and union reps make decisions that detrimentally affect teachers and the profession on a grand scale. They take away our benefits, freeze our pay, and decide they can no longer compensate us for the advanced degrees we have earned. They also continue to find ways to tie our evaluations to test scores, totally oblivious of the fact that we teachers cannot control when or if students show up in our classrooms regularly, if they have had proper rest and a nutritious breakfast, let alone if they are receptive to learning the content we work so hard to prepare and teach. It simply isn't fair. — M. Shannon Hernandez

Col. Shaffer is prohibited by his lawyer from talking. He's at great risk. They want to take away his pay and his health care benefits so they can hold it over his head and not allow him to talk while he's under suspension. This is not America. — Curt Weldon

People get their benefits as individuals but we all pay the cost together, same as the doomed mice of Gough island. The problem is not just fossil fuel emissions either, humans are killing rhinos, elephants, gorillas, and countless other endangered animals for no reason other than to make a few bucks. Put another way, those of us in the Western world have allowed things to get so unfair that while I stop at a Star Bucks drive-through on the way home to get a fifth of my daily required calories from a sugar-filled ice drink, someone on the other side of the world is eating an endangered fruit bat because they have no other way to get their protein. That is where acting naturally has gotten humans so far. — Dan Riskin

A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing, yes nothing, for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. — Chris Christie

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes. — Fareed Zakaria

Blessings we enjoy daily, and for the most of them, because they be so common, men forget to pay their praises. [and miss much of their benefits from grateful appreciation] — Izaak Walton

To the extent that language forces experiences into categories it is a screen between reality and the human being. In a word, we pay for its benefits ... Therefore, while using language, as we must of necessity, we should be aware of its shortcomings. — Abraham Maslow

Spending should be transparent. All spending by the Pentagon should be online. Every check. Exceptions should be made for legitimate national security issues. But military and civilian pay and retirement benefits are not state secrets. This has already been done in many state governments. — Grover Norquist

Without significant reform, the Social Security Administration will be legally and financially unable to pay full promised benefits within a generation. — Ron Lewis

When top executives get huge pay hikes at the same time as middle-level and hourly workers lose their jobs and retirement savings, or have to accept negligible pay raises and cuts in health and pension benefits, company morale plummets. I hear it all the time from employees: This company, they say, is being run only for the benefit of the people at the top. So why should we put in extra effort, commit extra hours, take on extra responsibilities? We'll do the minimum, even cut corners. This is often the death knell of a company. — Robert Reich

This book is for you. Getting the "most possible lifetime" dollars from Social Security is likely a significant objective of yours. Saving taxes in retirement is likely a worthy ambition. Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to. Perhaps leaving a legacy might be another goal. Certainly coordinating your Social Security benefits with your investment and other income to combat 20-25 years of inflation is of prime importance. — Mark J. Orr

I have fought to protect those benefits that ensure better salaries for teachers across the Nation such as grants to pay off student loans and funding for Teach for America. Still, we must all do more to show our continued appreciation for our Nation's leading role models. — Solomon Ortiz

How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices. — Howard Zinn

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your f**kin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. — George Carlin

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow

There are bills being discussed to raise the amount that Members of Congress pay in to their benefits and I support these pieces of legislation. — Rob Woodall

Isn't it ironic that pay, perks, and benefits all cost your company at the bottom line, but authentic recognition, especially when it's most unexpected, costs very little and gives the most impressive return on investment? — Chip Conley

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people. — Tony Judt

One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits - a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. — Chris Christie

And that brings me to one last point. I've got a simple message for all the dedicated and patriotic federal workers who have either worked without pay, or who have been forced off the job without pay for these last few weeks. Including most of my own staff. Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters. You defend our country overseas, you deliver benefits to our troops who earned them when they come home, you guard our borders, you protect our civil rights, you help businesses grow and gain footholds in overseas markets. You protect the air we breathe, and the water our children drink, and you push the boundaries of science and space, and you guide hundreds of thousands of people each day through the glories of this country. Thank you. What you do is important, and don't let anybody else tell you different. — Barack Obama

In my organizations I don't have employees; I have teammates. Yes, I do pay people and offer them benefits. But people don't work for me. They work with me. We are working together to fulfill the vision. Without them, I cannot succeed. Without me, they cannot succeed. We're a team. We reach our goals together. We need each other. If we didn't, then one of us is in the wrong place. — John C. Maxwell

Land ownership is an entry monopoly: Land is naturally scarce for each location since its supply can't be increased... When people buy a piece of land, their ownership gives them the right to exclude the rest of society from the benefits afforded to them by their land, even though those benefits only arise from nature and from the presence of goods and services that have been provided by that same society in the first place. Buyers pay for exclusive access rights to land and pay only to the previous landowner instead of to all the people who are now excluded from the location privileges that this one particular piece of land provides. — Martin Adams

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them. — John Stossel

Equal pay isn't just a women's issue; when women get equal pay, their family incomes rise and the whole family benefits. — Mike Honda

Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble. — Nancy Pelosi

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy. — George Friedman

Back when I was a devout Pharisee, I scowled at those who talked about grace, assuming they wanted both salvation and permission to do whatever they pleased. And when I came to discover grace as a biblical concept, it frightened me at first. The old idea of being saved by works has its benefits. It's a system where God owes you. You've been helping him out with all your good deeds. He can't very well put you through difficulty, since you're a taxpayer. You've paid your dues, you have your rights. But the beyond-belief teaching of grace is that we get what we can never pay for and more, including joy and hope and the desire to please him. I like living by God's grace a lot better than relying on my own efforts. — Phil Callaway

So what'll happen is there'll be some very good cinema experiences are going to see 3D where you have to pay more. And there'll be some bad experiences of going to see movies in 3D. And I just hope that this kind of gold rush mentality doesn't kill what could actually be something that really, really benefits the industry. — Neal H. Moritz

Bankers, they're not harmed by their mistakes. They benefit when things go right, and the society pays the price. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The students who feel alienated by current systems of standardization and testing may walk out the door, and it's left to them and others to pay the price in unemployment benefits and other social programs. These problems are not accidental by-products of standardized education; they are a structural feature of these systems. They were designed to process people according to particular conceptions of talent and economic need and were bound to produce winners and losers in just those terms. And they do. Many of these "externalities" could be avoided if education genuinely gave all students the same opportunities to explore their real capabilities and create their best lives. — Ken Robinson

Open-source software shows the potential of social norms. In the case of Linux and other collaborative projects, you can post a problem about a bug on one of the bulletin boards and see how fast someone, or often many people, will react to your request and fix the software-using their own leisure time. Could you pay for this level of service? Most likely. But if you had to hire people of the same caliber they would cost you an arm and a leg. Rather, people in these communities are happy to give their time to society at large (for which they get the same social benefits we all get from helping a friend paint a room). What can we learn from this that is applicable to the business world? There are social rewards that strongly motivate behavior-and one of the least used in corporate life is the encouragement of social rewards and reputation. — Dan Ariely

Conservatives are also against unions and want to legislate them out of existence via what are called "right to work" laws. Such laws see employment through a Strict Father lens: as simply a matter of individual responsibility by the employee. Conservative enmity against unions follows from the moral hierarchy: Rich Over Poor; Employer Over Employee. Unions are actually agents of freedom - freedom from corporate servitude and wage slavery. Without unions, employees have to individually take what is offered, usually far less than they would get with a union: not just pay but worker safety, health care benefits, pensions, reasonable working conditions and hours, reasonable vacation time. What is "reasonable"? What the union members can negotiate. Unions create freedom. Austerity — George Lakoff

Conservatives have proposed cutting pension plans and benefits like contributions to health care. Think for a moment what pensions are: Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. If employees' pensions are cut, the company is stealing their money - money they have already earned. If the corporation says it can no longer pay "generous" benefits, then the company is cutting employees' salaries. "Benefits" are not gifts; "generosity" is not at issue. Benefits are part of pay for work. Corporations — George Lakoff

Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay. — David Korten

Our military leaders don't seize power in coups; our soldiers and sailors don't go on strike for higher pay or benefits; our armed forces don't weigh in on the political process. In return, Americans have a sacred duty to treat them honorably. — Kathleen Troia McFarland

Open the borders to willing workers from any and all nations. They will create businesses that pay taxes, especially payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security benefits of retiring baby boomers. — Louis Navellier

Economists agree that all taxes potentially detract from the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, and the least inefficient types of taxation are those that are simple, uniform, and predictable, which allow businesses to plan and invest around them. The U.S. tax code is exactly the opposite. While nominal corporate tax rates in the United States are much higher than in other developed countries, very few American corporations actually pay taxes at that rate, because they have negotiated special exemptions and benefits for themselves. — Francis Fukuyama

Ozone and climate are global issues, and it's hard to find a way in which the benefits of shutting down carbon emissions are going to pay for themselves for any given power-plant, say. — Ramez Naam

In my case, I pay a standard premium to participate in the Federal Employees' Health Benefits Plan for my wife and myself out of each month's paycheck. — Virgil Goode