Quotes About Inequality

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel.

Repealing the estate tax won't create jobs, it won't boost GDP, and it won't add efficiency to the market. Instead, repealing the estate tax will simply add to the debt, hurt our ability to build a stronger economy and worsen economic inequality.

Some states are doing better than others. Some states naturally have stronger economies. So it's not as simple as saying, 'Let's go to $15.' If you do it wrong, you can hurt the very people you're trying to help.

If there is no education, there will be poverty. I believe in it strongly and feel that through education we can address the issue effectively.

I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.

I challenge British Muslims to accept that as strongly as they feel about Iraq or counter-terrorism measures, poverty and inequality have the biggest impact on the lives of the majority of British Muslims and do the most to prevent potential being fulfilled.

I have never felt the grips of patriarchy and its need to erase black women and our labor... so strongly until the creation of Black Lives Matter.

I felt I could still make a contribution with ideas. I didn't know how, and it has taken me some time to work that out. There were things that mattered to me about the future of the country: inequality, what the post-financial crisis settlement would be. I still felt strongly about all that.

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

One thing that struck me in my study of history is how people are excluded. I don't mean just racial minorities or women. Pretty much all poor people who don't have documents are excluded from history and its records. People who were illiterate usually didn't leave any primary documents.

The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.

It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recognize both the structural and the cultural barriers that so many poor kids face. But I think that if you don't recognize both, you risk being heartless or condescending, and often both.

I don't know why that is, but English politics is just so overly white. It's very much about the class structure.

As in the Divine Right of Kings, hierarchies invest those who preside at the top of their pyramidal structure with absolute power to rule over the lesser ranks that spread down like a marble staircase to the broad foundation stones of those with no power at all.

While many Americans agree that 'the system is rigged' economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.

The economy in South Africa was racially structured for many decades, if not centuries.

I was always made aware of inequality in society, that there was a class system. In Somalia, we have clan structures. My mother's family is ethnically not Somali, and so we spoke often about what it meant to be 'other' in that way.

As long as almost no new social housing is built, gross inequality will persist, and class structures will grow ever more constraining.

Bonnie and Clyde grew up in absolute poverty. They didn't go to school or have any money; the only way they could figure out how to get ahead was to steal. The banks were foreclosing on everyone's homes. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to that struggle.

I grew up with no money. No money. I always struggled and had the sense that there was this other class of people who went to college - this was when I was younger.

If you're a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you'll never have heard of Bill Gates.