Quotes & Sayings About Wealth Inequality

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. — Matthew Arnold

The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Indians, it promises the continent to the native people. Against republican government, it proposes righteous rule by judges and kings under God's law. Against a closed canon Bible and non-miraculous religion, the Book of Mormon stands for ongoing revelation, miracles and revelation to all nations. Against skepticism, it promotes belief; against nationalism, a universal Israel. It foresees disaster for the nation if the love of riches, resistance to revelation, and Gentile civilization prevail over righteousness, revelation and Israel. — Richard L. Bushman

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

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

Now, it's true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism. — Paul Krugman

'Egalitarians' who complain about inequality view the wealth of the wealthiest as bad in itself: it disfigures society. They would enact a wealth tax to extirpate the offending wealth. — Edmund Phelps

I write that crime is an unlawful act of violence that can be committed by anyone, and that punishment is the consequence designed for criminals who don't have the economic means to cover it up. Throughout history, men of wealth and power have been exempt from facing the consequences of their evil deeds. Crime, therefore, can be defined as an offense committed by an individual of inferior status in society. Punishment is a consequence forced on the perpetrator of the crime only if he occupies one of the lower steps of the social ladder — Mahbod Seraji

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction - indeed, in some sense was the destruction - of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. — George Orwell

I find it ironic that Republicans have such disdain for the lazy, and yet their solution to every problem is do nothing. Their answer to wealth inequality, do nothing. Health care? Do nothing. Climate change? Nothing. Racism? Doesn't exist. For a group of people so head over heels in love with self-reliance, they sure do recommend a lot of sitting on their ass. — Bill Maher

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society. — James F. Cooper

It's important to realize that innovation and growth in itself are not sufficient to moderate inequality of wealth. — Thomas Piketty

Actions that exemplify the limitations of a singular devotion to the profit motive, also draw a troublesome distinction between what is legal and what is moral. — Usman W. Chohan

The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered. — Howard Zinn

The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America. — Thomas Piketty

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

Root cause of inequality is the mass scale digital disruption advantage as means of wealth creation is concentrated. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

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

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

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

Inequality and poverty, health and wealth are hand in hand.
And if we are all born equal that should be true in all lands.
We cannot divide the world between poor and rich countries.
It's like saying the ones are good, the others are junkies.
That can only increase more prejudice, miseries and sorrow.
Turning the wheel today it will lead to a better tomorrow. — Ana Claudia Antunes

To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one centre of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities. This is history. Nowhere, as far as I know, has there ever been a civilization or moment when the wealth of the harvests, created by all, has been equitably distributed. Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion has done its part to add to the general inequality, which has risen in direct proportion to the wealth gathered; for wealth and power are much the same. The possessors of the wealth in effect buy the armed power they need to enforce the growing inequality. And so the cycle continues. — Kim Stanley Robinson

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

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 great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) — Victor Davis Hanson

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality. — Eric Alterman

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

The Unheavenly Chorus is the definitive study of participatory inequality in America. Marshaling prodigious evidence, the authors show how money not only buys influence directly but also affects associations that are supposed to be democratic antidotes to concentrated wealth. A monumental achievement of careful scholarship, this book offers real knowledge of how politics actually operates. — Robert Kuttner

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

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality ... are felt. — Baron De Montesquieu

We should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We
should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon
the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should
strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing
the inequality which is due to force or fraud. — Theodore Roosevelt

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. — Eugene V. Debs

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

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth. — Tony Judt

We have growing wealth creation and growing social inequality. Powerful — Don Tapscott

Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school - and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives. — Jonathan Kozol

The decision is I'm going to do everything I can to fight for the working class of this country, the low-income people against income and wealth inequality, do everything we can about climate change. — Bernie Sanders

In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation
and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. — Cornel West

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

Inequality of wealth grounded in unequal abilities is different. For most of us, the luck of the draw cuts several ways: one person is not handsome, but is smart; another is not as smart, but is industrious; and still another is not as industrious, but is charming. This kind of inequality of human capital is enriching, making life more interesting for everyone. But some portion of the population gets the short end of the stick on several dimensions. As the number of dimensions grows, so does the punishment for being unlucky. When a society tries to redistribute the goods of life to compensate the most unlucky, its heart is in the right place, however badly the thing has worked out in practice. — Charles Murray

(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

According to Piketty, if r remains at its historical rate of about 5 percent, then all the negative developments related to the inequality from the 19th century will be repeated. These will include disrespect for working people; worshiping of people who do not work and enjoy leisurely life by living at the expense of other people's labor; political acts that disdain equal opportunity and deny democracy; and opportunities for the rich to buy politicians. What logical conclusion can be made from Piketty's research? If this development continues, then by the end of the 21st century, the world's wealth may become the property of a few enormously rich individuals and institutions. Then, 99.9 percent of humans will end up working for a small number of oligarchs, who will accumulate their wealth by virtue of heredity instead of earning it based on merit. — I.K. Mullins

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

Poverty was nature surviving in society; that the limitedness of food and the unlimitedness of men had come to an issue just when the promise of boundless increase of wealth burst in upon us made the irony only the more bitter. — Karl Polanyi

Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future. — Tavis Smiley

Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates
riches. — Ludwig Von Mises

Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced [robots] wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. — Stephen Hawking

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

Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth. Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster. — Benjamin Barber

The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country - far more elevated, but it has many of those structural characteristics: the extreme inequality of wealth, the deterioration of infrastructure because it only serves poor people, predatory operations, huge corruption, and so on. — Noam Chomsky

'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

In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it. — Sally Wentworth

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

Today, the top one-tenth of 1% owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The economic game is rigged, and this level of inequality is unsustainable. We need an economy that works for all, not just the powerful. — Bernie Sanders

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

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

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

The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality. — Holly Sklar

Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality. — Howard Zinn

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

Like any developing country, it has an inequality of wealth. In the Chinese case, it is particularly [pronounced] by the fact that they decided they couldn't make the whole country move forward simultaneously, so they've started region by region. So the interior regions are much less well off than the coastal regions. And this is certainly a huge challenge, because it produces a flow of populations from the poorer regions to the richer regions. — Henry A. Kissinger

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows - this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That's what things look like in our cities at present — Robert Walser

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

We cannot buy it. We are too poor. Then men who have made the law have taken our own drink from us, and have not left us wherewith to buy it. Yet they can buy it, because they are rich. I have a feeling that that is not just. I do not grudge them their riches and all it can buy for them. — Neil M. Gunn

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

We must begin by acknowledging that there is a complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of these is equality. On the social plane we have an India based on the principles of graded inequality, which means elevation for some and degradation for others. On the economic plane we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. — B.R. Ambedkar

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything. — Charles Moore

And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can't look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger - although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses. — Bertolt Brecht

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

Given our current system of property ownership, it makes sense that we would see greater wealth inequality in places where there's greater population density because land values command a greater percentage of the financial resources in the denser areas and only flow into the hands of those who own land. — Martin Adams