Quotes About Inequality

When the left party in a system severs its bonds to working people—when it dedicates itself to the concerns of a particular slice of high-achieving affluent people—issues of work and income inequality will inevitably fade from its list of concerns.

Professional-class liberals aren't really alarmed by oversized rewards for society's winners; on the contrary, this seems natural to them -- because they are society's winners. The liberalism of professionals just does not extend to matters of inequality; this is the area where soft hearts abruptly turn hard.

Then there are disturbing reports like the recent study showing that, in terms of wealth, black and Hispanic college graduates actually "fared significantly worse" in the late recession than did members of those groups who hadn't gone to college. The people in question were the ones who did everything right, who went through life the way our society instructs us to, and they were punished for it.

We're all free agents in this noncoercive class system, and Brooks eventually concludes that worrying about the problems faced by workers is yet another deluded affectation of the blue-state rich.

He that has one eye is a prince among those that have none.

But knowledge to their eyes her ample pageRich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;Chill penury repress'd their noble rage,And froze the genial current of the soul.

O God! that bread should be so dear,And flesh and blood so cheap!

The "some college," "four-year college graduate," and "no college" types who have high incomes often had a head start on many well-educated workers.

The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice system, tribes and bands can be forced through a long, convoluted, and expensive process designed to wear us down and bankrupt our economies. Be good. Play by our rules. Don't cause a disturbance.

Five million people die unnecessarily each year because of illness related to lack of potable water. Half of them are children under the age of five. To bring it home, think about this: one child dies from lack of clean water every twelve seconds.

The growth of this kind of stubborn ignorance in the midst of the Information Age cannot be explained away as merely the result of rank ignorance. Many of the people who campaign against established knowledge are otherwise adept and successful in their daily lives. In some ways, it is all worse than ignorance: it is unfounded arrogance, the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind.

Overwhelming and astounding inequality, especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: 'I might have been in his place.' "30

Many of the people who campaign against established knowledge are otherwise adept and successful in their daily lives. In some ways, it is all worse than ignorance: it is unfounded arrogance, the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind. By

Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.

Since the white cops ventured over only when they needed a Negro to conveniently arrest for some crime, the residents had no protection from pickpockets and thieves and burglars, scofflaws and roughnecks, moonshiners and drunks and rapists.

Das Problem war nur, dass zwar die Weißen vom Virus befallen wurden, aber andere Leute sterben mussten.

There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.

Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched,than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.

The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.

Il faut choisir entre le champagne pour quelques-uns ou l'eau potable pour tous.

The patriarchal family made its appearance, founded on the sole and personal property of the father, who had become head of the family. Within this family the woman was oppressed.

Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all -- inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.