Burgess Owens: “No, I will not yield now. There are some other factors that are involved that drive the prices down so low, as there is…”

“No, I will not yield now. There are some other factors that are involved that drive the prices down so low, as there is in many businesses. There are many other factors involved than the wages paid. We have a thriving economy, and we owe it to our workers to try to get a fair wage for them in those areas where the supply of labor is so great until the entrepreneurs, the business owners, are able to exploit that. They can get labor cheap, so they get it cheap. Most people in the country are in areas where the labor supply is not so cheap and they have to work for a minimum wage. There are about 13 million people who still work for minimum wage, unfortunately, because they are in situations where they have to compete in a labor supply pool where they cannot get higher wages; or, in some cases, they may have a situation where if they were organized, they might be able to demand high wages because the supply of labor is not so much greater than the demand. But the organization of workers has been thwarted in this country by our poor labor laws. Of all the industrialized nations, we have the worst labor laws. We make it more difficult for people to organize and for people to bargain than any other industrialized nation in the world. So we keep down the wages. And by having a minimum wage, a floor, we are only protecting ourselves as a Nation. The Constitution talks about promoting the general welfare.…”