Quotes About Inequality

Em condições de desigualdade desenfreada e de mobilidade social estagnada, a repetição da mensagem de que somos responsáveis pelo nosso destino e que merecemos o que recebemos corrói a solidariedade e desmoraliza aqueles que foram deixados para trás pela globalização.

Of those born poor in America, few make it to the top. In fact, most do not even make it to the middle class. Studies of upward mobility typically divide the income ladder into five rungs. Of those born on the bottom rung, only around 4 to 7 percent rise to the top, and only about a third reach the middle rung or higher. Although the exact numbers vary from one study to the next, very few Americans live out the "rags to riches" story celebrated in the American dream.37

Recall the richly compensated meth dealer and the modestly paid high school teacher.)

In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe their success is morally justified. In a meritocratic society, this means the winners must believe they have earned their success through their own talent and hard work.

There is striking evidence—now gathered and acknowledged by the OECD and IMF—that economies with more equal distributions of income and wealth have stronger and more stable economic growth than those with greater inequality.56 Redistributive policies which reduce inequality are found to have in general a positive impact on growth.57

If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.

While most Americans have access to the best oral health care in the world, low-income children suffer disproportionately from oral disease.

It was all about size now: the big ran the world on the sweat of the small, and if the big faltered for any reason, the small were the first to go.

The work was done by hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants known as the "Polish brigade." The men toiled through spring and summer of 1980 with sledgehammers and blowtorches, but without hard hats, working twelve- to eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, often sleeping on Bonwit Teller's floors. They were paid less than $5 an hour, sometimes in vodka. Many went unpaid and were threatened with deportation if they complained.

In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.

A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans.

Thomas Sowell once wrote, "Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

To criticise inequality and to desire equality is not, as is sometimes suggested, to cherish the romantic illusion that men are equal in character and intelligence. It is to hold that, while their natural endowments differ profoundly, it is the mark of a civilised society to aim at eliminating such inequalities as have their source not in individual differences but in (social) organisation. R. H. Tawney1

We had two dead white girls in a city that was six-sevenths black.

I hated what this country had become and wanted nothing more than to hold up a mirror so its citizens could see it for what it truly was, not the Land of Opportunity for which our forefathers fought and died, but as the fascist regime that served to funnel the money upward from those most in need into the pockets of those who would see them all starve in the streets, the same men who took away their livelihoods and stranded them in a city rotting beneath their very feet.

Listen friends, you have to face the truth: You are never going to be rich... The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

The diseconomies of capitalism are treated as the public's responsibility. Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government.

Capitalism is not just an economic system but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists.

Racism is not simply about one man's irrational hatred of another but his self-hatred, doubting his own moral goodness and purpose.

Racism and inequality are likened to a fungus which grows in dark places and is all the more poisonous because one cannot see it.

Although Brazil never practised the racial segregation that marred the United States or South Africa, many of the poor in today's Brazil are of darker skin than the better-off.

for a variety of reasons, US citizens are increasingly likely to live in all-poor or all-rich neighborhoods and much less likely to live in communities where they would ever even have the chance of becoming friends with someone from a different class.