Quotes About Inequality

Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability,

Demoralized by their inability to change their station in life, they must accept that the meaning of politics lies not in institutional reform but in daily emotion. They must stop thinking about a better future for themselves, their friends, and their families, and prefer the constant invocation of a proud past. At the top and throughout society, material inequality creates the experiences and the sentiments that can be transformed into a politics of eternity.

As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere - education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave, vacations - Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.

Most nations' constitutions enshrine a right to health care. The list includes Japan and Germany, whose new constitutions the United States influenced after defeating them in the Second World War. Today Germans and Japanese live longer and healthier lives than Americans.

Slavery and immigration are two of the most common ways capital has replaced labor in a bounded society.

exploitation (normally tethered to class) and oppression (normally understood through gender, race, etc.)

points the way toward thinking about how "gender and class intertwine in capitalist production."7

Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

The poor don't really like that ticket. They are desperate to get away and join the rich, and have glossy hair, bright eyes and white teeth. The rich live longer and can afford to be charming.

The next time you say 'Life isn't fair' remember that 40% of the world lives on less than $2/day and does not eat every day. How does your 'not fair' compare to theirs? - Tom Cunningham

During the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, it probably occurred to very few average people that we were entering a period of hardship for billionaires.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

Have you ever been offered a job by a poor person? No one has.

Money dictates nearly step of social mobility from the very first moments of life. How much our parents make often determines whether we go to college. It affects the jobs we get offered and the ones we can afford to take.

Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.

Science offers the chance to cure debilitating and once-intractable disorders like hemophilia and sickle cell disease. But we need to make sure the ability to access these therapies, or the risk that someone can be locked out of them, doesn't widen gaps between the rich and poor.

Ladies and gentlemen, I take office at a time in which the world is living in extreme contradictions.

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

I started caddying when I was nine years old at a very exclusive country club in Dayton, Ohio. And I saw how the other half lived, if you will.

Big Oil is a club, and they'll do everything to keep me out.

Middle class families should not be forced to scrape by with less while oil companies get away with more.

There are lots of different people who use food banks - from young parents to older people.

Will he get a place for his oldest boy? He can not. His girl? Why, the Chinaman is in her place too!