Quotes About Inequality

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.

Who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife?

Campania is Italy's poorest region and in many respects its saddest.

Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty

Thus, according to the survey, individuals' behaviors are mainly to blame (i.e., lack of willpower), though respondents still often recognized the multifaceted nature of inequality and the role of structural factors such as educational opportunities and discrimination

This perspective further argues that whites often don't recognize these systemic inequalities and thus don't acknowledge the privileges they enjoy by the virtue of being white and blame the disadvantaged position of many minorities on their own poor choices and wayward values.

Hispanics are faring quite poorly relative to most other groups, and Asians are faring quite well, as they surpass whites by a comfortable margin.

In other words, race is a social construction, and how groups are defined varies over time and place.

African Americans are still more likely to be poor, unemployed, and incarcerated and suffer from worse health than whites. The

A running theme in the book is that how we define racial and ethnic groups, along with changing patterns of identification in the U.S. population, affects our understanding of racial and ethnic inequality.

The disparities of income and wealth in the world today are an affront to any reflective person.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,And went all naked to the hungry shark;For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in deathThe seal on the cold ice with piteous barkLay full of darts; for them alone did seetheA thousand men in troubles wide and dark:Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.

Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

Under capitalism, man exploits man; while under socialism just the reverse is true.

If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).

The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

I've never seen any subscriber to neo-liberal economics admit the fact, but part of the way in which inequality drives economic progress – in the neo-liberal system – is by making it clear that there are severe consequences for failure. Bankruptcies, dole queues, even people sleeping in the streets; all these are human tragedies, but in the neo-liberal world view, they are also reminders of what happens if you don't work hard enough.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TVAnd you think you're so clever and classless and freeBut you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit.