Quotes About Redistribution

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

Richness in the world is a result of other people's poverty. We should begin to shorten the abyss between haves and have-nots.

The poor are the only consistent altruists; they sell all they have and give it to the rich.

You can't propel a nation to move forward if all you are doing is taking something from them.

In one sense, massive land redistribution was the basis of the American republic. The U.S. government took Indian lands, peaceably through treaties if it could and forcibly or through fraud and war when it thought necessary. The government then redistributed these ceded or conquered lands to white citizens. Southern redistribution, in essence, was about whether Southern whites could be treated as Indians and Southern blacks could be treated like white men.

Efficiency was just a measurement of how fast money moved from the poor to the rich. We prefer the opposite of efficiency, which is to say, justice.

No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.

As I look back over China's sixty years under communism, I sense that Mao's Cultural Revolution and Deng's open-door reforms have given China's grassroots two huge opportunities: the first to press for a redistribution of political power and the second to press for a redistribution of economic power.

If the economy doesn't grow, and the pie therefore remains the same size, you can give more to the poor only by taking something from the rich. That will force you to make some very hard choices, and will probably cause a lot of resentment and even violence. If you wish to avoid hard choices, resentment and violence, you need a bigger pie. […] Economic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet.

If we seized all the assets of the eighty-five wealthiest people in the world to make a fund to give annually to the poorest half, it would raise their spending power by less than 10 cents a day.

The world knows about our Jesus. They know about His poverty and love of the underdog. They know He told His followers to care for the poor and to share. They've heard about His radical economic theories and revolutionary redistribution concepts. They might not understand the nuances of His divinity or the various shades of His theology, but they know He was a friend of the oppressed.

Quem era o idiota que punha a felicidade deste mundo na repartição da riqueza?

steal from the rich and give to the poor. Well, maybe just steal from the rich.

He could be like a modern-day Robin Hood: steal from the rich and give to the poor. Well, maybe just steal from the rich. One step at a time.

Part of the story is race. In poor southern states such as Mississippi, the rich-poor divide coincides with a racial divide, which, given the differences between the two parties on racial issues, will lead to a bigger difference between the voting patterns of rich and poor. Beyond this, race is tied into economic issues and policies: given the high correlation of income and race, redistribution often looks like a racial policy.

Received left-wing wisdom holds that the police cannot lower crime, only massive welfare spending and the redistribution of wealth can.

Margaret Thatcher's government redistributed money from rich to poor. And that's the nature of a modern western democracy.

If you want to leave move money in the hands of poor people, you cannot do it through personal income tax cuts. You have to just give them money.

A properly designed tax system can strike a balance between helping the poor and, at the same time, giving people the incentive to work.

Liberal redistributionists in favor of heavy taxation place less weight on incentive than do small-government conservatives.

Progressive taxation can offset the effect of growing inequality.

You don't boost growth by cutting taxes, you do that by giving money to people.

Can America continue down the path President Obama is taking us on, to a time soon and certain when a majority of wage-earners pay no income taxes but a majority of citizens receive federal benefits?

Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.