Quotes About Inequality

I have this soft spot for have-nots. So, I was really inclined to portray their pain and pathos in 'Highway.'

The mere mention of domestic service brings some people out in spots of outrage, but there is a crying need for relatively low-level employment. It's ridiculous that people at the top are killing themselves in demanding jobs and then coming home to mow their own lawns.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage.

If extreme poverty is allowed to increase, it will give rise to new problems, including new diseases that will spread from countries that cannot provide adequate healthcare to those that can. Poverty will lead to more migrants seeking to move, whether legally or not, to rich nations.

Chicago is an incredibly great city, but it was clear to me that greatness wasn't being spread to all our neighborhoods.

Men like Abraham Lincoln recognized that if the slaveholders were not stopped, it would only be a question of time until they spread their system of elite rule to the entire country. Poor men would be bound for life into menial labor, and American democracy would die.

Dowry is still pervasive and spreading like cancer in the society. Apart from legal sanctions, there should be more social awareness on the issue so that people start to practice what they preach.

I think technology is spreading, and I think one's experience of technology is going to relate increasingly to class - not so much to country.

Bruce Springsteen's world is where everybody did these terrible jobs, if they had jobs at all, and he wanted something better.

Life is difficult in Africa, even getting three square meals.

Flats are being sold for 1 lakh per square feet even though the poor can't even afford one meal in the day. It's an inhuman and insulting display of wealth, and I wanted my movie's title, 'City of Gold,' as well as the title song to reflect that.

Folks in the bottom half of the economy are already squeezed hard. They will be bloodied and bankrupt if economic policy inadvertently induces a recession.

There are more and more products with fewer people able to consume them. We have to help those who don't have the economic stability to grow, or one day there will be very few who are able to buy what we're selling.

Bearing in mind most companies rely on the middle classes in developed countries to sell goods and services throughout the value chain, dealing with inequality is a matter of brutal enlightened self-interest. It's simple economics: Global stability equals global growth equals profits.

But I think most importantly, we need to realize that not everyone is privileged or born into a good life, stable homes or a home, period.

Having enough to eat, being able to educate your children, have reasonably stable employment, and being able to live in a society which isn't collapsing around you-all of these things have been generally eroded.

The deck is stacked against Obama.

We have, in the E.U., a market rigged in favour of the rich and stacked against the poor, and I think that's wrong.

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility - America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

My primary goal is to eradicate poverty; I believe it is immoral and a stain on our society. And so when I despair or get angry, I take the time to think about how I can best achieve that goal - and then I get to work.

Few Americans other than the One Percent have a stake in the American economic and political system.