Income Disparity Quotes

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

Looking back now, what I experienced in the wake of the Goldman piece was a lesson in the subtle truth about class politics in this country. Which is this: you can pick on the rich in an ironic, Arrested Development sort of way, you can muss Donald Trump's hair, you can even talk abstractly about class economics using clinical terms like "income disparity." But in our media you're not allowed to just kick the rich in the balls and use class-warfare language. The taboo isn't so much the subject matter, the taboo is the tone. ~ Matt Taibbi

In 7.81 square miles of vaunted black community, the 850 square feet of Dum Dum Donuts was the only place in the "community" where one could experience the Latin root of the word, where a citizen could revel in common togetherness. So one rainy Sunday afternoon, not long after the tanks and media attention had left, my father ordered his usual. He sat at the table nearest the ATM and said aloud, to no one in particular, "Do you know that the average household net worth for whites is $113,149 per year, Hispanics $6,325, and black folks $5,677?"

"For real?"

"What's your source material, nigger?"

"The Pew Research Center."

Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. Pops politely asked the manager to dim the lights. I switched on the overhead projector, slid a transparency over the glass, and together we craned our necks toward the ceiling, where a bar graph titled "Income Disparity as Determined by Race" hovered overhead like some dark, damning, statistical cumulonimbus cloud threatening to rain on our collective parades.

"I was wondering what that li'l nigger was doing in a donut shop with a damn overhead projector. ~ Paul Beatty

You could live your whole life in one of those cities and never know how ugly it was somewhere else. ~ Becky Chambers

In the Talmud (a record of discussions of Jewish law and ethics by ancient rabbis) it is said that charity is equal in importance to all the other commandments combined, and that Jews should give at least 10 percent of their income as tzedakah. ~ Peter Singer

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

We need business to understand its social responsibility, that the main task and objective for a business is not to generate extra income and to become rich and transfer the money abroad, but to look and evaluate what a businessman has done for the country, for the people, on whose account he or she has become so rich. ~ Vladimir Putin

Every American should have above average income, and my Administration is going to see they get it. ~ William J. Clinton

For the primary and secondary school years, we will aid public schools serving low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

deductible, depreciable, and deferrable - are about reducing your taxable income. No investment does that better than real estate, which offers unprecedented tax advantages both while you own it and when you sell it. Millionaire ~ Gary Keller

No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

We haven't shed our engineering pragmatism, so we accomplish things in the simplest manner possible. It helps with budget, obviously. We're not getting rich off web video, and we're supporting two families with our income, so we need to keep as much of the budget to ourselves. ~ Rhett McLaughlin

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf. ~ Will Rogers

Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois, narrow-minded Frenchman? the 'ever needy' man? ~ Karl Marx

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life. ~ Bertrand Russell

People understand that the economy is rigged. They're working longer hours for low wages. All new income and wealth, almost all, is going to the people on top. ~ Bernie Sanders

We still have a great amount of work to do in social development, including resolving one of the biggest challenges we face in this area, namely, reducing the gap between high-income earners and people, citizens of our country, who are still living on very modest means indeed. But we cannot, of course, adopt the solution used 80 years ago and simply confiscate the riches of some to redistribute among others. We will use completely different means to resolve this problem, namely, we will ensure good economic growth. ~ Vladimir Putin

I am humbly following in your footsteps and having a row with the Government over the iniquity of the Marriage Tax in the form of supertax ... our incomes being added together we are liable for supertax which we are refusing to pay on the grounds of morality as I consider in a Christian country it is an immoral and outrageous act to tax me because I am living in Holy matrimony instead of as my husband's mistress. ~ Marie Stopes

Listen to learn. Learn to earn! ~ Rob Liano

There are those who are legitimately corrupt, who cannot admit that legitimacy allows them to corrupt legitimacy, and to legitimately corrupt others. ~ Justin K. McFarlane Beau

Let there be no mistake, Sen Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate that we've had about how to raise incomes, how to reduce inequality, increase upward mobility, has been very good for the Democratic Party and for America. ~ Hillary Clinton

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. ~ Plato

We will have bigger bureaucracies, bigger labor unions, and bigger state-run corporations. It will be harder to be an entrepreneur because of punitive taxes and regulations. The rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of attaining greater income equality. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

We don't need to do anything new. We simply need to protect Social Security so that when people reach a certain age and are no longer earning an income, they have a safety net through which they are not going to fall. ~ Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Whenever I think about the budgetary problems, I think about the problems of Errol Flynn ... reconciling net income with gross habits. ~ Malcolm Rifkind

Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

Someone's gotta determine whether you guys are destined for superstardom," I said, my mind catching up somewhat. A light bulb popped over my head. "Hey, I could be your momager! Get you gigs, do your wardrobe. Ride your coattails all the way to the Grammys." I was mentally calculating my cut.
"Mom, we're a high school band who haven't even properly rehearsed yet. Don't write the acceptance speech just yet," she chided.
"Mmhmm," I said distractedly, thinking of the Porsche I'd buy with my income.
Brad the front desk receptionist wandered past. "Brad!" I called, stopping him. "Lexie's band is going to be world famous. Want her autograph now so you can sell it on eBay in five years and retire a rich man?" I asked him.
He grinned. "You bet. I'll also be doing a TMZ interview telling all about how I knew her before she was gobbled up by the fame monster," he responded without missing a beat.
I gave him a thumbs up and turned to Lexie, grinning. She had her head in her hands. ~ Anne Malcom

Recipients of transfers tend to become less self-reliant and more dependent on government payments. When people can get support without exercising their own abilities to discover and respond to opportunities for earning income, those abilities atrophy. People forget - or never learn in the first place - how to help themselves, and eventually some of them simply accept their helplessness. ~ Robert Higgs

It remains to be seen the extent to which the critical needs of seniors in low income high rises, people with home medical needs and those with disabilities have been adequately planned for and met during widespread power outages. I fear the answers. ~ Sheri Fink

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.' ~ Andrew Forrest

If we assume that the purpose of the economy is to serve and improve the welfare of the entire body of citizens, the U.S. model has clearly been a major failure. It has served a minority, and the majority have not only failed to share in the income gains yielded by the model, they have suffered from reduced benefits, greater job instability and stress, and a diminution of expectations and sense of hope for the future. ~ Edward S. Herman

Since the traditional recorded-music business models have drastically changed, there is truly diminished income derived from recorded music by artists - both current and catalog. The touring industry has become much more important as a majority revenue stream and the ancillary fan experiences and promotions that may be derived from it. ~ Irving Azoff

This may be the one clear truth of the so-called border issue: Put a poor country next to a rich one and watch which way the traffic flows. Add impediments, the traffic endeavors to flow around them. Eilimate disparity. the traffic stops. ~ George Saunders