Quotes About Inequality

Unless wealth was chastened by culture or regulated by government, it was at worst predatory, at best boring.

the most dangerous members of the criminal class—the criminals of great wealth.

This book is about the role of interest in a modern economy. It was inspired by a Bastiat-like conviction that ultra-low interest rates were contributing to many of our current woes, whether the collapse of productivity growth, unaffordable housing, rising inequality, the loss of market competition or financial fragility. Ultra-low rates also seemed to play some role in the resurgence of populism as Sumner's Forgotten Man started to lose patience.

As Bastiat understood, a very low rate of interest may benefit the rich, who have access to credit, more than the poor.

In the more remote ages of antiquity, the world was unequally divided. The east was in the immemorial possession of arts and luxury; whilst the west was inhabited by rude and warlike barbarians, who either disdained agriculture, or to whom it was totally unknown.

unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society.

Washington resorted to this procedure during the 1780s, with the healthy teeth coming from his slaves, who received thirteen shillings per tooth, or about one-third of what Le Moyer typically paid on the free market.

eating dog food at the foot of the rich man's table.

It was hard to believe that in a society of computer chips, banana chips, and anti-lock brakes, of sitcoms, Home Shopping Clubs, and pay-per-view, and of surround-sound stereos and microwave ovens—it was hard to believe that such destitution could exist at all, much less under the very nose of the same society… He'd

Keller hesitated. "I suppose," he said pleasantly, "that any system that gives power to a particular class will tempt that class to exploit the powerless. It seems to be human nature.

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

Colonial racism is built from three major ideological components: One, the gulf between the culture of the colonialist and the colonized: two, the exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the coloniast; three, the use of these supposed differences as standards of absolute fact.

Racism... is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist.

Bravo, ma per te sarà come un gioco, sarà come i ragazzini quando giocano a far gli indiani: farai l'indiano, ma i veri indiani siamo noialtri, veri operai e veri disoccupati; tu sarai sempre un indiano finto, ci avrai sempre papà con i suoi magazzini, di riserva, per tenerti su il morale, anche se, per puntiglio, ti lascerai morire di fame e il morale, nella disoccupazione, è tutto, bello mio.

When people scratch their heads and wonder how it can be that the stock market is booming and executive compensation is at an all-time high but the overall economy is less dynamic and workers are not benefiting, look no further than the trillions of dollars in stock buybacks.

At the end of the Cold War, workers received an estimated eleven cents of every dollar they earned for their employer. Thirty years later, they made less than six cents on the dollar. In effect, the personal returns employees received for their labor were cut in half.

siempre es lo mismo: los que sufren de injusticia dan la sangre por los que sufren de injusticia. Esto me es insoportable.

As an explanation tool, the concept of class serves, first and foremost, to clarify who gains and who losses from specific economic processes and policies and with what consequences.

Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it.

Or the poor's distrust of anything proposed by the rich and powerful (a distrust that is always proportionate to the mutual ignorance between those who feel it and those who inspire it, to the number of the poor, and to the inanity of the laws).

I feel sympathy for the working class lad. I've always championed about ticket prices and try to equate that to people's salaries.

Like me, she has scruples. Why is it that only people with money have scruples? Do we have no money BECAUSE we have scruples?

I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between the feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and getting ripped off

They call my country the land of the free, but I was born poor and black, and there wasn't much that was free about that.