Quotes & Sayings About Income Inequality

The United States has worse income inequality than Nigeria. — Max Fisher

What is most frightening about Vautrin's lecture is that his brisk portrait of Restoration society contains such precise figures. As I will soon show, the structure of the income and wealth hierarchies in nineteenth-century France was such that the standard of living the wealthiest French people could attain greatly exceeded that to which one could aspire on the basis of income from labor alone. Under such conditions, why work? And why behave morally at all? Since social inequality was in itself immoral and unjustified, why not be thoroughly immoral and appropriate capital by whatever means are available? The — Thomas Piketty

There's five factors or characteristics of places where kids from poor backgrounds don't do very well. And those are places that have more economic and racial segregation, places with more income inequality. — Gwen Ifill

I think the issue of income and wealth inequality is in fact a moral issue. — Bernie Sanders

I'm 40 years old. What I have seen my whole life is widening income inequality. — Robert Reich

A holistic solution to income inequality is going to take a lot of work, but every time you prove that one of the strands is achievable and that it has a positive impact on people's lives you take another step towards proving the bigger theory of the case. — Bill De Blasio

When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist. — Timothy Noah

Income inequality is worse in towns run by Democrat mayors than in towns run by Republican mayors. — Rand Paul

As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If so-and-so didn't get his or her fair share of income, it's because someone or something - government, the system - didn't distribute income properly. To the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom. — Jonah Goldberg

a very substantial and growing inequality of capital income since 1980 accounts for about one-third of the increase in income inequality in the United States - a far from negligible amount. — Thomas Piketty

We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation. — David Mamet

I've been talking about income inequality in America for twenty years, and when I was president, people didn't pay much attention to it, probably because wages were going up. But I don't think I've given a single solitary speech since I left office that I hadn't talked about it. It's a problem around the world and within the United States. So these people have put that on the agenda. — William J. Clinton

Indentured servitude is banned, but what about students seeking to sell shares of their future earnings in exchange for money up front to pay for their college tuitions? — Robert B. Reich

Labour ministers often look puzzled when reports show that Britain has one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world. They just don't get it. They see poverty, inequality, fairness, as all about income. For the past 12 years, they have relied on tax credits to solve this. But tax credits do not solve poverty: they mask it. — Theresa May

The truth is, Hillary Clinton's ideas create more income inequality. Why? Because bigger government creates crony capitalism. When you have a 70,000 page tax code, you've got to be very wealthy, very powerful, very well connected to dig your way through that tax code. — Carly Fiorina

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there. We have 300 million poor in India. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Part of the scandal of American Christianity is that statistically the U.S. is the most Christian country in the world, and yet as a country we have the greatest income inequality in the world. And as a country we are uncritically committed, not simply to being the most powerful nation in the world militarily, but to being as militarily powerful as the rest of the world combined.
We Christians live in a tradition that is passionate about issues of economic justice and peace and yet at least half of American Christians, probably even more, think it's really important that we be as powerful as the rest of the world put together. — Marcus J. Borg

Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low-income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let along making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then. — Janet Yellen

When we over consume the Earth's resources, we create an economic imbalance in societies and in the world. Affluent people and affluent societies can afford to buy everything in large quantities. They have an abundance of wealth and think they have the license to waste. They use a great deal and leave others with very little. It is this imbalance between rich and poor that gives rise to crime, violence, prejudice, and other negative attitudes.

When some people cannot get what they need through honest hard work, and see others wasting what is so precious, they feel justified in taking it by force. The Earth can only produce enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. Our greed and wasteful habits perpetuate poverty, which is violence against humanity. — Arun Gandhi

I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. — Kurt Vonnegut

The past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority — Janet Yellen

In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or wealth but will result in returns proportionate to service rendered. — Laurance Labadie

Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all - inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all. — Thomas Sowell

Since people can only be paid for their goods and services or extract rent from society, less income is available to service the payment of goods and services when proportionally more income is used to pay monopolized rent for land. Essentially, whenever property owners collect rent from rising land values, fewer financial resources are left over for wages and capital investments, and this dynamic can effectively put society on the fast track toward social decline and wealth inequality. — Martin Adams

Here's what income and wealth inequality is about. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made more than 24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers. This level of inequality is neither moral or sustainable — Bernie Sanders

The major economic policy challenges facing the nation today - pick your favorites among the usual suspects of low public and household savings, concerns about educational quality and achievement, high and rising income inequality, the large imbalances between our social insurance commitments and resources - are not about monetary policy. — Timothy Geithner

It would, I think, be hard for anyone to make the case that the United States is a just society or anything close to a just society. In America today, there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality. Injustice is rampant. — Bernie Sanders

Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class. — Bernie Sanders

The devotion that young Chinese feel to the Internet is driven by deep factors ranging from youth unemployment and income inequality to political repression and the demographic imbalance between men and women. — Evan Osnos

Conventional wisdom on government's role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax; government transfer payments have become less progressive. — Paul Ryan

Liberals talk about the 'income inequality' and the 'unfairness' and the disparity of the haves and the have-nots in New York City. Who has been running that city for all this time? Who has created the underclass in this country? It's the Democrat Party. — Rush Limbaugh

Since the 1970s, analyses of the public debt have suffered from the fact that economists have probably relied too much on so-called representative agent models, that is, models in which each agent is assumed to earn the same income and to be endowed with the same amount of wealth (and thus to own the same quantity of government bonds). Such a simplification of reality can be useful at times in order to isolate logical relations that are difficult to analyze in more complex models. Yet by totally avoiding the issue of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income, these models often lead to extreme and unrealistic conclusions and are therefore a source of confusion rather than clarity. — Anonymous

Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else. — Steven Rattner

By the end of his presidency - and the sixteen-year run of Dixie dominance in Washington - income inequality and the concentration of wealth in the federation had reached the highest levels in its history, exceeding even the Gilded Age and Great Depression. In 2007 the richest tenth of Americans accounted for half of all income, while the richest 1 percent had seen their share nearly triple since 1994.8 — Colin Woodard

Why do we still cling to the intellectually retarded notion that liberty can be obtained, maintained, or lost at the end of a gun barrel? When you're working 3 minimum wage jobs to make the minimum payment on a pair of socks you bought 12 years ago because your credit card company slapped you with an interest rate that would make a loan shark holler WTF! ... well, no one needs to hold a gun to your head. Your ass has already been sold down the river. — Quentin R. Bufogle

They talk about class warfare
the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country. And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people? — Bernie Sanders

In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures. — Helene D. Gayle

Because the true root cause of hunger is inequality, any method of boosting food production that deepens inequality will fail to reduce hunger. Conversely, only technologies that have positive effects on the distribution of wealth, income, and assets, that are pro-poor, can truly reduce hunger. — Miguel A. Altieri

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012. — Steven Rattner

If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis. — Tyler Cowen

One of the most important of all the causes of great inequality of income is the inheritance of a great fortune by a small minority. — Hugh Dalton

income inequality" was actually the issue, why is there such outrage at the oil and pharmaceutical company executives who at least keep us warm at night and heal our sick as they take our money, but not a protester to be found questioning the career politicians who produce nothing and yet have somehow become multimillionaires just about all? — Evan Sayet

Income and wealth inequality in America today has reached levels not seen since the 1920s. Corporate — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear. — Ben Bernanke

President Obama believes that income inequality is one of the most pressing matters facing the nation. If we are going to be a country that provides ladders of opportunity and believes in a thriving middle class, then we have to raise the minimum wage. — Thomas Perez

Income inequality and wage stagnation finally took their place among the principal moral issues of our time. — David Rolf

Our focus should be on making the most of our own lives, regardless of whether we start at the bottom or the top- not on envying the advantages and achievements of others. — Yaron Brook

Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth? — Simon Kuznets

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it. — Kenneth Langone

Income and wealth inequality have reached obscene levels, the threat of climate change is more frightening than ever, and the billionaire class is now allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to buy the candidate they want. And it is up to us to stand up and fight back. If we stand together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. — Bernie Sanders

When the left party in a system severs its bonds to working people - when it dedicates itself to the concerns of a particular slice of high-achieving affluent people - issues of work and income inequality will inevitably fade from its list of concerns. — Thomas Frank

(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom - and the recession made it much worse. (g) There has been a hollowing out of the middle class. (h) There is little income mobility - the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth. (i) And America has more inequality than any other advanced industrialized country, it does less to correct these inequities, and inequality is growing more than in many other countries. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Hillary Clinton is making income inequality a central theme in her campaign. Yeah, for example, today she pointed out that her husband makes $300 million a year. She has to get by on $200 million a year, and that's not fair. — Conan O'Brien

The gap between median black family income and median white family income hasn't changed in twenty years," he told me. "That is not a society moving toward equality. It's a society that's reproducing inequality by race."56 — Christopher L. Hayes

Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy? — Ben Shapiro

They talk about income inequality. I'm for income inequality. — Rick Santorum

In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth. — Thomas Piketty

The increase in inequality in income is a longtime trend, but the pressure on middle- and low-income workers is going up rapidly. Especially if they live in an area where there are high housing and gas prices, like California. — Alice Rivlin

Everything in America is so stratified by class now. We have the 93rd level of income inequality in the world. You're already seeing highway lanes that are for pay and ones that aren't. — Adam McKay

All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent. — Thomas Piketty

This is what income inequality means in America, and why the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. According to a recent study, CEO pay is now 295 times more than the pay of a typical worker. In 1965, the differential was 20 times. We must create an economy that works for all, not just the top 1%. — Bernie Sanders

You want to close the income inequality gap in part? Give us better educated kids out of high school. Give us kids that can challenge and succeed in the challenge with technology. You give us those kinds of kids, and watch the needle move. — Kenneth Langone

I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities and ensure a reasonable standard of living for the bottom 20 percent. — Sendhil Mullainathan

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas... — E. M. Forster

The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat. — Ben Shapiro

The best solution to income inequality is providing a high-quality education for everybody. In our highly technological, globalized economy, people without education will not be able to improve their economic situation. — Ben Bernanke

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government. — Bruce Bartlett

I want to make a positive point of Ikea. It makes income inequality a minor distraction. — Greg Gutfeld

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality. — George Bernard Shaw

Today, the United States is No. 1 in corporate profits, No. 1 in CEO salaries, No. 1 in childhood poverty and No. 1 in income and wealth inequality in the industrialized world. — Bernie Sanders

Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated. — Nicholas Kristof

Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy, the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from rational and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well. — Thomas Piketty

Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people. — Robert Higgs

We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labour from all parts of the world because [the state of the world is as follows: ] if we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country. — Alan Greenspan

I would now, however, more strongly emphasize, and especially as to the United States, the inequality in income and that it is getting worse - that the poor remain poor and the command of income by those in the top income brackets is increasing egregiously. So is the political eloquence and power by which that income is defended. This I did not foresee. — John Kenneth Galbraith

'Inequality' has become the political theme/slogan of our time in both Europe and the U.S., yet political leaders do not even bother to consider that their own policies, which put the entire burden on central bankers to print money and drive up stock, bond and other asset prices, are actually exacerbating income and wealth disparity. — Paul Singer

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves. — Ben Bernanke

There are some people who say that they're concerned only with poverty but not inequality. But I don't think that is a sustainable thought. A lot of poverty is, in fact, inequality because of the connection between income and capability-having adequate resources to take part in the life of the community. — Amartya Sen

Rabbi Hiyya advised his wife, "When a poor man comes to the door, be quick to give him food so that the same may be done to your children." She exclaimed, "You are cursing our children [with the suggestion that they may become beggars]." But Rabbi Hiyya replied, "There is a wheel which revolves in this world." - Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 151b — Joseph Telushkin

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take. — Barney Frank

In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living standards of more of its citizens than in other countries ... The much higher crime rate than in Europe or Japan
in per capita terms, the US has eight times more people in prison than Europe and twelve times more than Japan
shows that there is a far bigger underclass in the US. — Ha-Joon Chang

Angus Deaton has written a wonderful book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality ... Deaton's book is a magisterial overview of health, income, and wealth from the industrial revolution to the present, taking in countries poor and rich. Not just jargon-free but equation-free, the book is written with a beautifully lucid style ... [P]owerfully argued and convincing. — Michael Marmot

Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer, but it does make the state stronger - and it does increase the power of officials and politicians, power more menacing, more permanent and less useful than market power within the rule of law. Inequality of income can only be eliminated at the cost of freedom. The pursuit of income equality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum. — Keith Joseph

Some liberals think that describing any role that education gaps play in creating income inequality is some sort of sellout - that, in essence, you're telling the middle class, 'Tough luck; you should have stayed in college.' — Timothy Noah

The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Inequalities at the bottom of the US wage distribution have closely followed the evolution of thee minimum wage: the gap between the bottom 10 percent of the wage distribution and the overall average wage widened significantly in the 1980s, then narrowed in the 1990s, and finally increased again in the 2000s. Nevertheless, inequalities at the top of the distribution - for example, the share of total wages going to the top 10 percent -- increased steadily throughout this period. Clearly, the minimum wage has an impact at the bottom of the distribution but much less influence at the top, where other forces are at work. — Thomas Piketty

Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs did not start out wealthy, and actually added to income inequality, but we all benefit from their creative effort. — Foster Friess

In a world of massive wealth and income inequality, Europe must support Greece's efforts to build an economy which creates more jobs and income, not more unemployment and suffering. — Bernie Sanders

Democracy was a terrifying concept for the old world of Europe, and even the new world of North America, where income inequality was rife. The finest minds of the nineteenth century warned against giving the vote to the workingman, for fear of mob rule or the tyranny of the majority. — George Megalogenis

Schools, the institutions traditionally called upon to correct social inequality, are unsuited to the task; without economic opportunity to follow educational opportunity, the myth of equality can never become real. Far more than a hollow promise of future opportunity for their children, parents need jobs, income, and services. And children whose backgrounds have stunted their sense of the future need to be taught by example that they are good for more than they dared dream. — Kenneth Keniston

There is far too little discussion in Washington about the collapse of the middle class , almost no discussion at all about the incredible income inequality and wealth inequality in this country, and the fact that we're moving toward an oligarch form of society. — Bernie Sanders

showed that even with the considerable increase in the average level of education over the course of the twentieth century, earned income inequality did not decrease. Qualification levels shifted upward: a high school diploma now represents what a grade school certificate used to mean, a college degree what a high school diploma used to stand for, and so on. — Thomas Piketty

By now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom seventy per cent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show. — Noam Chomsky

The sharp reduction in income inequality that we observe in almost all the rich countries between 1914 and 1945 was due above all to the world wars and the violent economic and political shocks they entailed (especially for people with large fortunes). It had little to do with the tranquil process of intersectoral mobility described by Kuznets. — Thomas Piketty

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened. — Helene D. Gayle

Some people pursue happiness in ways that tend to be accompanied by large incomes, others in ways that tend to be accompanied by lower incomes. In a free society, these choices are made voluntarily, with psychic rewards balanced against monetary rewards. Income inequality is accordingly large. So what? — Charles Murray

The top 10 per cent of the US population appropriated 91 per cent of income growth between 1989 and 2006, while the top 1 per cent took 59 per cent. — Ha-Joon Chang

In the same way that Occupy Wall Street forever elevated that concept of income inequality, the Black Lives Matter protesters have elevated the idea of inequity in policing as it relates to minority communities. — Charles M. Blow

Nothing would more quickly and definitively reduce U.S. income inequality than allowing every worker in all businesses to participate in deciding the range of incomes from one worker to another. They would never do what is nowadays a matter of normality: give one person millions, in some cases billions, while others have barely enough to make a living. — Richard D. Wolff