Quotes About Inequality

Why is it that people channel so many of their hang-ups about people who are poor or unsuccessful into the food-stamps program?" asks Concannon as we settle into our chairs, then answers his own question.

You can tell a lot about a country by observing how much better they treat themselves than foreigners at the point of entry.

Capitalism's machinery favored these capitalists as it had never favored anyone else in its history.

The U.S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that nanoseconds had value. The haves enjoyed a perfect view of the market; the have-nots never saw the market at all.

If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they'll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones.

When I had first been hurled into the world of the 1970s I had thought I found Utopia. And now I was discovering that it was only a Utopia for some. Shaw wanted a Utopia which would exist for all.

Tears and hugs and saying I'm sorry is a good first step, but for me, the question is not one of changing the hearts of individuals as [much as] it is dealing with the systems and the structures that are devastating African-American people."43

There are those destroyed by unfairness and those who are not.

Kimse zenginler kadar kötü olamaz.

In order that a select few might live in great opulence, millions of people work hard for an entire lifetime, never free from financial insecurity, and at great cost to the quality of their lives. The complaint is not that the very rich have so much more than everyone else but that their superabundance and endless accumulation comes at the expense of everyone and everything else, including our communities and our environment.

Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. They are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity.

most people are worse off than they were under Communism . … The quality of life has deteriorated with the spread of crime and the disappearance of the social safety net

The first law of the market is to make the largest possible profit from other people's labor. Private profitability rather than human need is the determining condition of private investment. There prevails a rational systematization of human endeavor in pursuit of a socially irrational end: "accumulate, accumulate, accumulate.

capitalism has done more to undermine such things than any other system in history, given its wars, colonizations, and forced migrations, its enclosures, evictions, poverty wages, child labor, homelessness, underemployment, crime, drug infestation, and urban squalor.

Instead of thinking that racism is an irrational output of a basically rational and benign system, we should see it is a rational output of a basically irrational and unjust system. By "rational" I mean purposive and functional in sustaining the system that nurtures it.

Again — it cannot be said too often — profits are what you make when not working. This explains why, in most instances, the secret to getting rich is not to work hard but to get others to work hard for you.

Education, once free, is now accessible only to those who can afford the costly tuition rates. The curricula have been "depoliticized," meaning that a left perspective critical of imperialism and capitalism has been replaced by a conservative one that is supportive or at least uncritical of these forces.

The standard "trickle down" theory says that the accumulation of wealth at the top eventually brings more prosperity to the rest of us below; a rising tide lifts all boats. I would argue that in a class society the accumulation of

By including almost everyone, middle class serves as a conveniently amorphous concept that masks the exploitation and inequality of social relations. It is a class label that denies the actuality of class power.

Of itself, class struggle does not bring inevitable proletarian victory or even a proletarian uprising. Oppressive social conditions may cry out for revolution, but that does not mean revolution is forthcoming.

The struggle over environmentalism is part of the class struggle itself, a fact that seems to have escaped many environmentalists. The impending eco-apocalypse is a class act. It has been created by and for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many.

If profits are going up, then the economy is "doing well"—even if the working public is falling behind in real wages and living conditions, as happened during much of 2001–2007.

free-market world holocaust.

Racism blurs and buries economic grievances. Whites are less likely to act against their bosses, being themselves too busy trying to keep African Americans down. Thus the working populace is divided against itself, making it difficult for White and Black workers to act in unison against the moneyed class.