Middle Class Economy Quotes & Sayings

Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers. — Martin O'Malley

Women leading means that Congress is working to create jobs, make quality child care more affordable and strengthen the middle class because we understand that America grows the economy and opportunity from the middle out, not the top down. — Barbara Mikulski

No economy can continue to function when the vast middle class and everybody else don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing without going deeper and deeper into debt. — Robert Reich

If India is an emerging economy with millions of new consumers, sell them the Volvo. Sell them the Cielo car. Sell them whatever you can, hamburgers and KFCs. It's the middle classes who have moved into being able to own a car, a refrigerator. For them there is this mantra that the General Electric refrigerator is better than some other model, that the Cielo car is fancier than the Ambassador. — Vandana Shiva

In the agricultural age, women conceived younger and had many more children because children were economic assets as workers on the farm. In the postindustrial age, children are emotional assets but economic liabilities, costing both a middle-class husband and wife or a single parent over $10,000 a year. — Rachel Lehmann-Haupt

A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction. — Klaus Schwab

With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks. — Howard Schultz

From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5 percent. That generated a massive gain in real GDP per person from $16,000 to over $50,000. A huge win for the middle class. — Lawrence Kudlow

And I believe we should strengthen unions which have formed the bedrock of a strong middle class. It should be easier to bargain collectively. That's not only fair, it makes workers more productive, it strengthens our economy. — Hillary Clinton

The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great! — Elizabeth Warren

But this convention is about more than re-nominating President Obama. It's about Americans coming together to build one economy - not from the top down, but from the middle class out and the bottom up. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

I am not somebody who just says let's beat up on the bad guys. No. I want to summon the good guys and give people the incentives and opportunities to actually grow this economy, put more people to work, get the middle class really feeling like they're back in business. — Hillary Clinton

And so whether it's failing to move forward on the Dream Act, failing to move forward on putting teachers back to work, failing to do all the things we could do right now to help the economy and middle class, this Congress is just saying no. — David Plouffe

Presidents in both parties - from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan - have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity. — Marco Rubio

Anyone who has followed the U.S. economy in recent years can tell you while corporate America and their wealthy executives have recovered from the last recession, middle-class families have not. About 95 percent of income gains between 2009 and 2012 went to the top one percent. — James P. Hoffa

We are going through historic times, and my vision is a world, first of all, in which America continues to be that one indispensable nation. Because we're taking care of our own people, because our economy is strong and our middle class is growing, and people feel like hard work is rewarded, and we are continuing to expand opportunity and diversity and tolerance and respect. — Barack Obama

I'm Bill Clinton and I think you deserve a change. That's why I've offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut ... — William J. Clinton

Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy. — Andy Stern

We can't just cut our way to prosperity. Even as we look for ways to reduce deficits over the long term, we must grow the economy in a way that strengthens the middle class and everyone willing to work hard to get into it. — Jennifer Palmieri

Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last, we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor, like my dad did, while their children, tucked in bed, dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring, but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead. — Chuck Schumer

This opportunity - to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life - it isn't bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business. — Marco Rubio

For globalization to work for America, it must work for working people. We should measure the success of our economy by the breadth of our middle class, and the scope of opportunity offered to the poorest child to climb into that middle class. — John Sweeney

I think that is the fight that we have to wage if we're to save the middle class. And I do have doubts about whether Hillary Clinton or whether any Republican candidate out there is prepared to take on the big money interests who control so much of our economy and as a result of Citizens United, our political process as well. — Lindsey Graham

Being a Midwesterner, I know that many of the middle-class manufacturing jobs that had been at the heart of our economy are either gone or going, and they're not coming back. — Eli Broad

In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor. — Barack Obama

Coming from Paris, I'd really like to live in Rio. I think it's gotten better. It's not as violent. The economy is better. The middle class is rising. — Vincent Cassel

So I'm not proposing anything radical. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton. Back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot ... At the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses
not when so many folks are just trying to get by. — Barack Obama

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. — Mitt Romney

The economy has definitely been improving, and things like the stock market are doing better, but the economy has to be good for working-class and middle-class families who work every day, send their kids to a school like is in front of my house, and they have to be able to enjoy their lives. That's why you don't pass a trade agreement that ships even more jobs overseas. — Russ Feingold

Public education is the key civil rights issue of the 21st century. Our nation's knowledge-based economy demands that we provide young people from all backgrounds and circumstances with the education and skills necessary to become knowledge workers. If we don't, we run the risk of creating an even larger gap between the middle class and the poor. This gap threatens our democracy, our society and the economic future of America. — Eli Broad

We cannot get serious about helping the private sector create quality jobs without focusing first on the main drivers of our economy - the American middle class and those struggling to enter it. — Paul Tonko

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that. — Nick Hanauer

Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down. — Martin O'Malley

We can go back to economic plans that are only designed to benefit the wealthiest among us, like Mitt Romney. Or we can keep moving forward with President Obama's vision for a growing economy that works for middle-class families in North Carolina and all across the country. For me, for North Carolina and for America, it's an easy choice. — Bev Perdue

It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked
because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed? — Michael Moore

The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike. — Adam Davidson

The American people know the economy is too weak. Too many of them are suffering. So the question for Washington is, are we going to continue to play political games and - and - or are we going to say, we can do something right now to create jobs, to put money in the pockets of the middle-class, hire construction workers, teachers, veterans? — David Plouffe

This kind of inequality - a level we haven't seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity - that's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run. — Barack Obama

I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class. — Barack Obama

We're facing headwinds from Europe. Europe doing the right things here to stabilize their situation is important to our small businesses, our workers, the middle class here, and overall economy. — David Plouffe

As Ohio's working families continue to recover from the worst economic recession in our country's history, we need a president who's committed to growing our economy by lifting up the middle class. — Sherrod Brown

The confidence is really driven by the woman - whether she can have the confidence that there will be enough earning or income to finance all the domestic spending - but also by the middle-income class, which for many Asian countries has become the growth power for the economy. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

The Marxist critique is only a critique of capital, a critique coming from the heart of the middle and petit bourgeois classes, for which Marxism has served for a century as a latent ideology ... The Marxist seeks a good use of economy. Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the "good use" of the social! — Jean Baudrillard

From the day he first walked through the door of the Oval Office, President Obama's top priority has been growing our economy, creating good jobs, and rebuilding middle class security. — Denis McDonough

A thriving middle class is the source of growth in a technological, capitalist economy. Investing in the middle class is the most pro-business thing you can do. — Nick Hanauer

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman

We don't want to go back to the same policies and the same practices that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led us to this catastrophe. We have to keep moving forward. — David Axelrod

This country is facing an economy that has been radically transformed.And these changes have been disruptive. They have changed people's lives. The jobs that once sustained our middle class, they either don't pay enough or they are gone, and we need someone that understands that as our nominee. — Marco Rubio

There is an alternative to terror. It is called, in the political order, democracy. In the economic order, it is called the dynamic enterprise economy. ( ... ) It empowers poor people from the bottom up. ( ... ) A dynamic economic sector is the poor's best hope of escaping the prison of poverty. It is the only system so far known to human beings to take poor people and make them, quite soon, middle class, and some of them even (horrors!) rich. — Michael Novak

To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. — Tennessee Williams

This ought to be a season for cooperation in terms of pushing our economy forward, job creation, steadying the middle class, and laying the groundwork for a better future. And that's what we want to work on with Republicans and Democrats. — David Axelrod

Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class. — Matt Taibbi

We're going to have to invest in the American people again, in tax cuts for the middle class, in health care for all Americans, and college for every young person who wants to go. In businesses that can create the new energy economy of the future. In policies that will lift wages and will grow our middle class. These are the policies I have fought for my entire career. — Barack Obama

I'll go anywhere and I'll do whatever it takes to get this done. It's too important for Washington to screw this up. Now's the time for us to work on what we all agree to, which is let's keep middle-class taxes low. That's what our economy needs. That's what the American people deserve. — Barack Obama

The problem was not that Americans spent beyond their means but that their means had not kept up with what the larger economy could and should have been able to provide them. the American economy had been growing briskly, and America's middle class naturally expected to share in that growth. But it didn't. A larger and larger portion of the economy's winnings had gone to people at the top. — Robert B. Reich

Empowering women in the workforce is a key to growing the economy and having a thriving middle class. — Kirsten Gillibrand

With Americans worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, the New Direction Congress will work in a bipartisan way to lift our economy and help America's middle class. — Nancy Pelosi

Look at the [Bill] Clinton Administration and now the [Barack] Obama administration more recently. What we believe is that we implement policies that help people reach the middle class which is the cornerstone of our economy. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class. — Paul Tonko

The second reason why we haven't observed the growing gap is that our historical and social science analyses have concentrated on what has been happening within the 'middle classes' - that is, to that ten to fifteen percent of the population of the world-economy who consumed more surplus than they themselves produced. Within this sector there really has been a relatively dramatic flattening of the curve between the very top (less than one percent of the total population) and the truly 'middle' segments, or cadres (the rest of the ten to fifteen percent). — Immanuel Wallerstein

Making information free is survivable so long as only limited numbers of people are disenfranchised. As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists, and photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the middle classes in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education, and health care. And all that destruction will come surely enough if the dominant idea of an information economy isn't improved. — Jaron Lanier

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future. — Ayn Rand

When it comes to America's economy, the truth is that Mitt Romney believes that the key to our country's economic future lies in the failed policies of the past, the same ones that put banks before people, Wall Street before Main Street, plunging us into recession and devastating the middle class. — Charlie Gonzalez

A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel. — Rahm Emanuel