Quotes About Redistribution

We're not thieves. We're repatriating money that rich Cubans stole from poor Cubans so it can be returned to the rich Cubans who stole it.

They've got the usual Socialist disease — they've run out of other people's money.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," Mrs. Quisdorf said, nodding. "That's the general idea. Who's to say if it actually works, though.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

If you think spreading money around by force seems like an odd definition of fairness, you're not alone.

It's true that redistributing income to the needy is politically easier in a growing economy than in a stagnant one.

The more we take the less we become, the fortune of one man means less for some.

I consistently found the pacifist dream intimately connected with the dream of wealth redistribution. My fellow dreamers and I thought we had better ideas than did the masses we imagined we were protecting. In our hubris we thought we were embodying great intelligence and common sense that surpassed all traditional ideas.

My views on wealth redistribution were shaped largely by knowledge elites who earned their living by words and ideas--professors, writers, and movement leaders. Like most of the broadminded clergy I knew, I reasoned out of modern naturalistic premises, employing biblical narratives narrowly and selectively as I found them useful politically. The saving Grace of God on the cross was not in my mix of life changing ideas.

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

And since one of the main purposes of social policy is to keep the population passive, people with power are going to want to eliminate anything that tends to encourage the population to get involved in planning?because popular involvement threatens the monopoly of power by business, and it also stimulates popular organizations, and mobilizes people, and probably would lead to redistribution of profits, and so on.

A corporation's primary goal is to make money. Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.

Fear has also been used to carry out a redistribution of wealth—which is to say back under the control of the state, where Putin is chief among a collection of officials whose roles more closely resemble those of Mafia dons than public servants.

It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about 'redistributing' it.

The real question is whether the federal government should be in the business of redistributing wealth to equalize the economic status of every state, including states where not many people, for whatever reason, have chosen to live. That type of redistribution is a distortion of our economy.

Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed. -Agrarian Justice

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above and below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Where there's property, there's theft.

Obama does not represent America. Nor does he represent anything what our forefathers stood for. This country is basically built on an attitude. It's a way of life. It's not because you're born here. It's not that you're supposed to take from those who have and give to those who haven't. That kills a country. It killed Russia.

Granting that you have more money than others, and that you don't deserve such wealth—but stopping there—allows you to settle the score by paying your taxes and advocating more redistribution. This reductive attitude toward inequality has the added comfort of justifying nasty judgments about the other side.

I want millionaires and billionaires and Big Oil companies to pay their fair share.