Quotes About Inequality

Someone needs to explain to me how it is that the richer Britain gets, the poorer it thinks itself. All

Isn't it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?

Kisumu has the distinction of being the poorest city in Kenya. Almost half the people live on fifty cents a day or less.

Despite its lavish spending, the United States has one of the highest rates of both infant and maternal death among industrialized nations," according to The New York Times.

In Europe, industrialized parts of Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, more than 20 percent of food is simply thrown away, allowed to rot, or otherwise wasted. In the United States, it's 40 percent. That's bad for people who don't have enough to eat, bad for the economy, and bad for the climate. When wasted food rots, it produces enough methane to cause as much warming as 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year.

To sum up: Rich and middle-income people are causing the vast majority of climate change. The poorest people are doing less than anyone else to cause the problem, but they stand to suffer the most from it. They deserve the world's help, and they need more of it than they're getting.

What is the one aspect of this broken world that, when you see it, touch it, get near it, you just can't stand? Very likely, that firestorm of frustration reflects your holy discontent, a reality so troubling that you are thrust off the couch and into the game. It's during these defining times when your eyes open to the needs surrounding you and your heart hungers to respond that you hear God say, 'I feel the same way about this problem. Now, let's go solve it together!

three billion—one half of humanity—live on less than two dollars a day.

Why can't the world ever be unfair in my favor?

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them, and then caught them, prosecuted them for not paying their taxes, and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs. The jails are full and the problem is getting worse every day. p153

What a great advantage to be of noble birth, since it gives a man of eighteen the standing, recognition and respect that another man might not earn before he was fifty. That means winning thirty years' start with no effort.

Jesus Christ came to blind those who saw clearly, and to give sight to the blind; to heal the sick, and leave the healthy to die; to call to repentance, and to justify sinners, and to leave the righteous in their sins; to fill the needy, and leave the rich empty.

In the midst of this, and specifically in reference to this distribution of free food to poor people, Ronald Reagan declared that he hoped there would be an outbreak of botulism (deadly food poisoning)!

It's all these different capitalists, in far-flung parts of the world—and that's all the more so today: in far-flung parts of the world—it's all these capitalists in competition with each other, forcing each other to find ways to more efficiently produce, and more effectively exploit people, even if that means throwing a bunch of people out of work, or off the land, or whatever.

Money doesn't talk, it swears.

There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.

Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!

A lot of people don't have much food on their table. But they got a lot of forks 'n knives. And they got to cut somethin'.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.

And the strong are dominated by the weak and the ignoble.

A blush rose to my face. I fixed my eyes on the Pavement. The Other was so neat, so elegant in his suit and his shining shoes. I, on the other hand, was not neat. My clothes were ragged and faded, rotten with the Sea Water I fished in. I hated drawing his attention to this contrast between us, but nevertheless he had asked me and so I must answer. I said, 'What changed was that I used to have shoes. Now I have none.

The empire of cotton has continued to facilitate a giant race to the bottom, limited only by the spatial constraints of the planet.

When we think of capitalism, we think of wage workers, yet this prior phase of capitalism was based not on free labor but on slavery.