Quotes About Inequality

After Halle Berry does her films and Queen Latifah does her films, it's left to all the black, Latino and Asian actresses to fight over a couple of roles. I opted for some TV. There's just not a ton of work in film.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

Rich people don't pay taxes? Of course they pay taxes - they pay tons in taxes. They pay for everyone else who doesn't pay taxes.

Tony Blair is paid $500,000 for one speech, and no one asks how he is going to spend it.

I don't think any person in America should die because they are too poor to live.

But there are too many people that make so much money at the cost of lives of other humans and for no reason but to make the money.

I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.

People who work full-time in America should not have to live in poverty - simple as that. Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead. Too many people are finding the rungs on the ladder of opportunity further and further apart.

If too many people feel excluded from the system and cannot access its benefits, they will ultimately rebel against it.

There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.

People will sooner aid a sick dog lying on the sidewalk than to try to find shelter for a sick person. It's too much to deal with.

In part because of my own journey from a council estate in East London to a seat in the House of Commons, and in part because my adolescence took place during an economic boom and the advent of new technology, I had assumed that over time we would all become better off and, as the white wristbands told us, we would 'Make Poverty History.'

Money is hardly neutral. Its connection to power makes it a highly charged social phenomenon and a mediator of relationships. Because it has historically been controlled by men, it has given men a tool for controlling women.

To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.

I remember I used to go school with guys who couldn't afford notebooks, pens, paper: the necessary tools needed in order to survive in school. It's a lot of kids in Gary who are at a disadvantage without that.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success.

We see that in the top problems in the world between haves and have-nots, generally we find that the root cause is education.

Recently released government economic statistics covering 2010, the first year of real recovery from the financial collapse of 2008, found that fully 93 percent of additional income gains coming out of the recession went straight into the wallets and purses of the top 1 percent.

Moderately priced homes might draw working families in a metro area. And having rising incomes at the top might price lower-income families out.

People at the very top of the income scale also benefited from globalization and automation. But the income of working- and middle-class people in the developed world has stagnated.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist.

I'm not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and investigating classic topics like monopoly power, racial profiling and health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad for markets, that people are racially biased and that illness is unequally distributed by social class.