Income inequality quotes:

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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
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
The United States has worse income inequality than Nigeria. -- Max Fisher
I want to make a positive point of Ikea. It makes income inequality a minor distraction. -- Greg Gutfeld
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
Let us wage a moral and political war against the gross wealth and income inequality... ...let us understand that when we stand together, we will always win. -- Bernie Sanders
The term 'income inequality' is a bit misleading because it suggests in a somewhat pejorative way that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, -- Edward Lazear
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
Amazons Jeff Bezos, Facebooks 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
There is a huge number of people outside our borders who would love to come here. In fact, many of them come here, get well educated, and then are required to leave... This is a factor in income inequality. -- Alan Greenspan
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The rich believe that they're different and that it is their right to pay a much lower tax rate. The response that you see from people on Wall Street, their dismissal and their almost contempt for the concerns about their culpability in the financial crisis, about the income inequality, shows that they are completely out of touch. -- Robin Wells
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
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
Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process we have created [a] privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of the income inequality. -- Alan Greenspan
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
They talk about income inequality. I'm for income inequality. -- Rick Santorum
I'm 40 years old. What I have seen my whole life is widening income inequality. -- Robert Reich
I think the stress on income inequality is something that every American should take seriously. -- Hillary Clinton
If you really want to end income inequality, I've got the way to fix it. People who don't work shouldn't get any income. -- Rush Limbaugh
Employers able to work together with workers and sharing gains and profits will lead to a much better world, getting away from income inequality. -- Dolores Huerta
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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
We started out covering income inequality in the magazine [Mother Jones], but that ongoing body of work positioned - and sourced - us well to put both Occupy and the 47 percent in context. -- Clara Jeffery
First of all, [Buckminster Fuller's] identification of the problems that are all that much more pertinent, all that much more pressing in the world today than in his own lifetime from sustainability in terms of the environment to income inequality. -- Jonathon Keats
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
Real income inequality is what we used to call striving and working hard to get ahead. Striving, educating ourselves, getting up and going to work, preparing, using our ambition, and, in that process, some people earned more and earned it sooner than others. -- Rush Limbaugh
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
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
I think the stress on income inequality is something that every American should take seriously, we have got to figure out how we're going to provide more economic opportunity - good jobs with rising incomes - and I'm excited to work with Senator Sanders in doing that. -- Hillary Clinton
I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts. -- Jonathan Haidt
I don't support everything Bernie Sanders supports, but I support most of it: universal health care, reining in Wall Street, fighting climate change, reversing the growth of income inequality, and so forth. If we could accomplish all this in a couple of years, I'd be delighted. But we can't. -- Kevin Drum
There are two economic realities in America today. There's been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after years of stagnation. However, income inequality remains significant, and nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. -- Lester Holt
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
Income inequality has gotten worse under President Barack Obama. -- Timothy Noah
Income inequality is worse in towns run by Democrat mayors than in towns run by Republican mayors. -- Rand Paul
Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth? -- Simon Kuznets
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
You have to let the market reward effort and skill. But a system in which inequality of incomes constantly increases over time is worrisome. -- Timothy Noah
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
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
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
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
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
We work harder and we earn less. Income inequality is at the highest point in over a century. While American capitalism never guaranteed success, it did guarantee opportunity, for too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation. -- Mario Cuomo
The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism. -- Ludwig von Mises
I think the issue of income and wealth inequality is in fact a moral issue. -- Bernie Sanders
Income inequality and wage stagnation finally took their place among the principal moral issues of our time. -- David Rolf
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
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
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

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