Quotes About Inequality

this vacuum at the heart of privilege

The only power poor people have is their hunger.

I also knew that because he was safely on the right side, the strongest side, he would never understand what it was like to live with seven corpses in your dreams, to live with women eaten by ringworm, or children bursting with stomach worms.

are comparatively less well-off

Although my parents always treated Lennie Mae respectfully, I was aware of the social distinctions between us, probably in part because Lennie Mae herself was so aware of those distinctions.

Wealthy people own more stocks and real estate than the nonwealthy.

did not at first appreciate how academically disadvantaged I was—especially compared with classmates from elite prep schools like Andover and Exeter and top-flight public schools like Bronx Science.

We have the ability to treat everyone equally under law; we have the ability to create governments to protect individual rights. But we don't have the ability to guarantee that even two kids the same age living on the same street will start from the same point; two children growing up in the same family don't even start from the same point. We certainly don't have the ability to ensure that everyone ends at the same point.

The Leon Trotsky wing of the university hates capitalism with a vengeance. According to this faction, capitalism does nothing good; it only broadens the gap between rich and poor and results in the exploitation of people for the sake of money.

Inequality by itself does not imply creation of poverty.

Abolishing private property means the unlimited right to redistribute wealth. "If the cause of poverty is the grossly unequal distribution of the world's wealth, then to end poverty, and with it the population crisis, we must redistribute that wealth, among nations and within them," says far-left Professor Barry Commoner.

By 1980 8.2% of American suburbanites (7.4 million people) lived below the poverty line; over the next two decades the figure doubled, meaning that impoverished suburbanites outnumbered poor people in the inner city. Murders fell in American cities by 16.7% but rose by 16.9% in the suburbs.

What perhaps began as a consensual, communal undertaking evolved into a highly centralised, highly unequal society. There was probably no sudden change or power grab: each generation built on the work of the last, and strides in efficiency were paid for with small sacrifices of freedom and equality. Rewarding labour with grants of food from the benevolent temple became, in time, a way of compelling hard work through the control of rations.

Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.

The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.

There's many witty men whose brains can't fill their bellies.

free men, whose minds were properly on their business, found a satisfaction in improving, cultivating, and providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery during life, had not the like inducement to be industrious.

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.

Society was not a "social pyramid" with the proportion of rich to poor sloping gently from one class to the next. Instead, it was more of a "social arrow"- very fat at the bottom where the mass of men live, and very thing at the top where sit the wealthy elite. Nor was this effect by chance; the data did not remotely fit a bell curve, as one would expect if wealth were distributed randomly. It is a social law, he wrote: something "in the nature of man.

I was the kind of poor where I knew right away I had less than everyone around me. Our environment, our physical space reflected our income.

I think, for me, the biggest issue is poverty in general, poverty in this time of plenty. It's reflected in homelessness. It's reflected in educational gaps. It's reflected in racial disparities.

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

At the federal level, I believe we should address inequality by reforming our criminal justice system, including demilitarizing our law enforcement departments.

At the federal level, I believe we should address inequality by reforming our criminal justice system and providing restorative justice to communities devastated by the enforcement of discriminatory laws.