Quotes About Inequality

Not only do the rich make our lives miserable, they are working to terminate the lives of multitudes.

We no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries, and poor and badly-educated ones.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty.

The arms trade – an intricate web of networks between the formal and shadow worlds, between government, commerce and criminality – often makes us poorer, not richer, less not more safe, and governed not in our own interests but for the benefit of a small, self-serving elite, seemingly above the law, protected by the secrecy of national security and accountable to no one.

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.

Rich voters are much more Republican than poor voters, especially in poor states, a pattern that emerged after 1990.

In asking why the patterns within states differ from those among states, we are specifically interested in why rich and poor have diverged so much in poor states and so little in rich states.

As figure 5.1 shows, in the past the United States was not more economically stratified than other countries, but the last thirty years have seen exceptional growth in the incomes of the richest Americans.

The poor have been getting richer faster in the poor states and the rich have been getting richer faster in the rich states; see figure 5.3.

Income inequality has been increasing in Democratic-leaning states and decreasing in Republican-leaning states. Tax cuts and deregulation (which have been championed by Republicans and reluctantly accepted by Democrats) have increased inequality in the richest states, while poverty-relief programs (largely instituted in Democratic administrations but generally left standing by Republicans) have decreased inequality in poor states.

Americans believe in democracy. But their democracy works such that the divide between rich and poor grows ever wider. In America, the winners control an ever-increasing percentage of the nation's wealth. To be a member of the upper class is to have privileges, among them ensuring that it's someone else's kid who is getting shot at in Iraq or Afghanistan. These

The assumption of more growth providing an eventual remedy to income inequality remained intact. And the United States remained what it had been: a nation in which the needs of corporate capitalism take precedence over the common good.

The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.

If you've never lived outside London, and if you've always had a car, it's difficult to understand how dire bus services undermine your standard of living: from being able to get to work, meet friends in the pub, get the weekly shop or take the kids on a day out.

Every two weeks, I'd get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.

There are women who literally squeeze a baby out of their bodies or get cut open in major surgery, have a human being, the next generation of the human race pulled from their bodies, and within a couple of weeks have to go back to work, because if they don't, they can't pay their bills. Something's wrong with that.

New York has arguably become the quintessential 1 percent city, a city that has been so given over to the rich that you now have to be rich to live here. Or not live here: New York's also a preferred destination for foreign money spent on vast, lifeless apartments in the sky that are occupied a couple of weeks a year at most.

To a billion people around the world surviving on just a dollar a day, the question of what to eat tonight is more about life and death than about recipes. The struggle of poor people around the globe weighs heavily on me, especially now that I am a mother, which is why I work with Oxfam.

High levels of economic inequality lead to imbalances in political power, as those at the top use their economic weight to shape our politics in ways that give them more economic power.

This country is going to implode, or put another way, it's going to get crushed under the weight of poverty. You can't have one percent of the people who own and control more wealth than the other 90 percent of the population.

It was very weird when my classmates were getting hundred-thousand-dollar cars because that was so not my reality.

We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money.

There is this sense of David Cameron leading a Government that's badly out of touch with ordinary people's lives. I'd absolutely welcome the opportunity to show all political leaders what life is like for most people.