Quotes About Poverty

My mother was born into a solidly middle-class family, but, as all too many Americans understand, everything doesn't always go as planned - no matter how hard you work. She died on welfare. Without the support of the state, I shudder to think of where we would have ended up.

We need to make sure that people are progressively better off in work than they would be on welfare.

There's a thing called a 'welfare cliff,' and what happens is you get up to a threshold - which is a very firm line - and if you jump over it, then you lose all of your benefits.

This resounding cry of 'welfare to work' enrages me because something like 75% or 80% of people who are on government assistance are already working.

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

The welfare state is collapsing all around us. There are people that realize that we can't go on this way, but I'm not sure how many people realize how close we are to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

From Scotland to India, and from Silicon Valley to Kenya, policymakers all over the world have become interested in basic income as an answer to poverty, unemployment and the bureaucratic behemoth of the modern welfare state.

The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Instead of helping a lucky few to escape disadvantage, a Labour government will aim to abolish poverty completely and create a more equal society, raising the living standards and well-being of all.

I met the most extraordinary people all over the Pacific, but especially the people in Vanuatu who, in a material sense, are the poorest people I've ever come across. They own nothing, but in a well-being sense, they are easily the wealthiest people that I've come across.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be banished, and if the wellbeing of the world's people enhanced - not just in this generation but in succeeding generations - we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends.

If you're broke and you're living on the street and you're happy, you're still winning compared to someone who is rich and depressed, because your mental wellbeing is still there.

Most agree, whatever their party political position, that the West can and should open its agricultural markets more fully to the products of the poorer countries of the globe. They are agricultural societies that need our markets more than our charity.

When I was young, my family didn't go on outings to the circus or trips to Disneyland. We couldn't afford them. Instead, we stayed in our small rural West Texas town, and my parents took us to cemeteries.

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It's almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.

I lived on the West Coast my entire life and I've seen first hand how the homeless crisis is spiraling out of control in cities like Seattle and Portland and Los Angeles.

Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.

Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they don't conform to the tastes of Upper West Side intellectuals? Use human rights as your excuse!

I was born on the west side of Chicago, and there was quite a bit of poverty. My family and I didn't have exactly the best or the most optimal financial situation in my youth, but we turned out well. My mom always made sure that we got a proper education and that we dedicated ourselves to our work.

We were growing up in West Virginia. Everybody was poor there in the southern part of the state. It was like growing up in the Great Depression from the stories I hear people tell. Everybody was poor and so we didn't know that we were any different from anybody else.