Quotes About Inequality

Racism, unfortunately, is part of the fabric of America's society.

I should say many things. Mexico has been one of the losers of the 20th century. We tried many different alternatives to development and unfortunately we have 40 percent of the population poor; we have a per capita income that is extremely low.

I had hoped that foreboding economic circumstances would have caused the ultra-rich to think not just of themselves and increasing their own personal affluence. Unfortunately, however, too many of them lack concern, and without this concern, the divisive imbalance will only worsen with recession.

I wanted to make a black story about South Africa. Unfortunately, no producer in the United States would put one penny into a black story.

I think, unfortunately, we've always lived in a world of massive inequality: inequality between the haves and the have-nots, inequality between men and women that not only exists temporally but geographically as well.

I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.

Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year.

Slums could be thought of as the development of a special organ, or they could be thought of as a tumor that's grown, and in some ways is unhealthy and could ultimately lead to the city's destruction. My own feeling is that slums are probably a bit of both.

Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.

Education from six-year-old to 14 is compulsory in Nigeria, but the simple fact is that a lack of resources, coupled with peoples' inability to afford books and uniforms mean the reality for millions of Nigerian children is a life without education.

Unimaginable riches for the few, disaster for the many - that's the new American way.

Because my business partner, Mitt Romney, was running for president when 'Unintended Consequences' was published, the media held up my book as a defense of the 1 percent.

Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.

Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn't borrow from banks.

Public-sector union organisers have told me about how firefighters, police officers, and nurses can no longer afford to live in the cities they serve and protect.

Britain's unique success as an industrialised nation-state prompted strong imitative endeavours not only across Europe, but also in Asia. Now many people, who were once humiliated into a sense of nationality by British rule, loom larger than their former masters.

Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

If you're low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn't seem entirely fair.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

In Puerto Rico, we continue to see the perpetuation of second-class citizenship in the United States.

The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.

The United States has the biggest discrepancy in health and longevity between our wealthiest and our poorest of any country on Earth.

I don't believe that killing the French model in order to become the U.K. or the United States overnight is the solution. You have a big debate on inequality there, and for our society, a lot of inequality would not be bearable.