Quotes About Inequality

We have always policed the bodies of people of color, and black people in particular. The Jim Crow South is a classic example. White flight in the North. School segregation. Gerrymandering.

Sometimes I think that the public's lack of criticism of the rich - and how they seek their pleasure - might derive from the fact that Americans still believe they will one day be joining their number.

Luck doesn't shine her light on each of us equally. She is arbitrary, irrational, unfair and sometimes downright cruel.

When the middle class constitutes only 20–30 percent of the population, it may side with antidemocratic forces because it fears the intentions of the large mass of poor people below it and the populist policies they may pursue.

the left stopped thinking several decades ago about ambitious social policies that might help remedy the underlying conditions of the poor. It was easier to talk about respect and dignity than to come up with potentially costly plans that would concretely reduce inequality.

it diverts attention from older and larger groups whose serious problems have been ignored. A significant part of the white American working class has been dragged into an underclass, comparable to the experience of African-Americans during the 1970s and '80s. Yet one has heard little concern from activists on the left, at least until recently, about the burgeoning opioid crisis, or the fate of children growing up in impoverished single-parent families in the rural United States.

economic grievances become much more acute when they are attached to feelings of indignity and disrespect.

Between 2000 and 2016, half of Americans saw no gains to their real incomes; the proportion of national output going to the top 1 percent went from 9 percent of GDP in 1974 to 24 percent in 2008.5

Latin America has been characterized by a "birth defect" of inequality from which it has not yet recovered.

Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom

There are 1.3 billion human beings in the world who subsist on less than a dollar a day and have yet to make their first phone call, let alone send an email. Is

Estamos frente a una nueva aristocracia del dinero organizado que, a diferencia de anteriores grupos dominantes, oculta tanto sus riquezas como sus hábitos, interesándole solo el prestigio de sus marcas y sus empresas.

El clasismo es una forma de violencia muy cabrona aquí en México. Es más: la misma POBREZA es una forma de violencia que los ricos imponen a los marginados de muchas formas [...]

México nació como un país desunido, racista, clasista, desconfiado, resentido y egoísta, sepultado en una patética desigualdad, que después de siglos de fracasos propios y de invasiones, ya solo creía en la Virgen de Guadalupe

Only now did I become throughly acquainted with the seducer of our people. It is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the dependance.

Bobby announced that he'd never again participate in a Candidates tournament, because the FIDE system made it impossible for any but a Soviet player to win.

Smoking is the now the principal avoidable cause of premature death in Britain. It hits the worst off people hardest of all. Smoking is one of the principal causes of the health gap which leads to poorer people being ill more often and dying sooner.

hers was the heartlessness of poverty, which, it seemed to me, is different from the heartlessness of wealth. p 290

you, the privileged, the chosen, the pampered, with nothing to do but go to school, hang out, do a little studying, go to college, get into a money-making racket, grow into your fat forties, still whining, still complaining, when there are millions around the world who'd offer fingers and toes to be in your seats, nicely clothed, well fed, with the world by the balls.

Litigation A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.

The only real avenue for social mobility was that of the freedman, for the manumitted slave could rise higher in Rome than in any other slave society. It takes an effort of imagination to conceive of a society where vast wealth was concentrated in so few hands; perhaps the nearest modern equivalent would be Saudi Arabia.34

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

First, there are stark differences. Second, young men of color are clearly targeted for more aggressive treatment. Third, these differences are not fully justified by differences in criminality. Fourth, the aggressive use of traffic stops as a tool to investigate possible criminal behavior, though justified as part of the war on crime, is surprisingly inefficient, rarely leading to arrests for contraband.

Fewer than 5 percent of Danes attend church. In godless Denmark, the national government funds a high quality education for all children, rich and poor alike, while in God-fearing America, education is funded through local property taxes, so neighborhood and income dictate a child's educational opportunities. Add in race and ethnicity factors to create a perfectly stratified school system segregated by educational opportunity.