Quotes About Poverty

Being unemployed is even more disastrous for individuals than you'd expect. Aside from the obvious harm - poverty, difficulty paying off debts - it seems to directly affect people's health, particularly that of older workers.

Texas is a great place to be rich and a terrible place to be poor. It's got the highest percentage of people without health insurance in the country. If you get injured on the job, good luck getting workers' comp. And God help you if you're poor and mentally ill.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages - below the poverty line for a family of two. That's unacceptable.

The exploitation of distressed workers and the social disparities must not continue.

Organizing gives workers the power to lift themselves out of poverty and build a better future.

What we're seeing is that even in high poverty neighborhoods, the average cost of renting is quickly approaching the total income of welfare recipients and low wage workers.

The factory work that lifted millions out of poverty in places like China and Vietnam probably did cost some workers in North Carolina and Wallonia their jobs.

Low-wage individuals barely get anything. I think we have to reward work, and I do think that we need to bump up the earned income tax credit to help low-wage workers.

The fact is that the rich are getting richer while the poor are being left behind. Women remain under-represented in boardrooms and under-engaged in the global workforce. Environmental change is leaving the poorest countries vulnerable. Voters are becoming more and more politically polarised and partisan.

We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.

I came from a poor family, so working and going to school at the same time was natural. It taught me multi-tasking, although we didn't call it that back then. I learned I could never be idle, I need to be doing many things at once.

My father was a factory worker, and we were really poor. But everything I earned peddling papers and working in stores, he made me put aside for education.

What poor people go through, it's amazing they don't do more violent things! If they'd just give you a little dignity, it might help you stand it better. They suffer no heat, no electricity, while you're working, but then you've got to face all the insults, too.

When we first were working, we had no money. We were all sharing this ghastly flat and we had nothing.

These Americans are among the working poor with full-time jobs earning $5.15 an hour. Millions fall into this boat, even more when you consider that the poverty line has not been adequately adjusted to reflect the true level of poverty in this country.

I grew up poor, financially lower class. Worked in restaurants for 17 years while going to acting school and trying to become a working actor. Because I know what it's like to not have money, I turn down roles if I don't want to play them.

I want to give people a basic income, so that if you're working hard, doing the best you can, that you can not just survive, but you can have a decent life.

By working hard we could make an average of about $5 a week. We would have made more but had to provide our own machines, which cost us $45, we paying for them on the installment plan. We paid $5 down and $1 a month after that.

We need to do more to help the men and women across the country who are working hard but still struggling to make ends meet due to low wages and high healthcare costs.

Helping folks who are working hard every day, but can barely make ends meet at the end of the month because their pay is so low, is something that we can absolutely change.

I came from the most humble side of society, and I know what it's like to be poor, really poor, and I was brought up in the '60s and '70s very poor, and I'm very happy flying the flag for the working man.

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.