An important factor influencing intergenerational mobility and trends in inequality over time is economic opportunity.
A new business model based on old principles of social justice where people matter – now that’s a revolutionary way to reduce inequality.
There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.
It is true that globalization has fueled greater income inequality. But much of this increase should be welcomed, not condemned. There is nothing inherently bad about inequality. Whether it is bad depends on how it comes about and what it does.
When corporations refuse to practice due diligence by not establishing grievance mechanisms for remedy of abuses against the hidden 94% of their workforce in their global supply chains, they perpetuate a depraved model of profit-making that has driven inequality to a level now seen as a global risk in itself.
Individual nations have offered their own contributions to income inequality – financial deregulation and upper-bracket tax cuts in the United States; insider privatization in Russia; rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico.
There is no question that we, as a country, need to deal with economic inequality across the country, and we need to make sure we have good-paying jobs for everyone.
Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the more equal they have been becoming. Now we have the reverse tendency. The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied by the increase in inequality.
Especially some of the poorest in our society need to have the greatest support because health inequalities are too wide.
We need to tackle extreme inequality because it is morally indefensible and socially corrosive – undermining our health, affecting our well-being, and undermining peaceful societies.
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.
Morality is the least of my concerns. To me, morality in a society that – however moral its pose – is hierarchically organized is simply a lie, an alibi for the inequalities that exist in society.
Economic growth driven by large-scale infrastructure investments without equitable provision of education will leave hundreds of millions of people behind, exacerbating inequality, disillusion, and instability.
Historically marginalized populations have already had less access to wealth and credit building opportunities, and the continued use of credit histories to set auto insurance pricing compounds racial discrimination and exacerbates wealth inequality.
The same way I’m not afraid of calling out systemic discrimination, I’m also not afraid of calling out inequality and the fact that inequality is growing in society and that affects everybody, regardless of race.
Capitalism is, fundamentally, an economic system that promotes inequality.
We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We’ll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won’t be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up.
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.
Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.
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.
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.
If someone thinks of something, some new innovation that benefits us all, and the market works properly, they get richly rewarded for that, and that’s just terrific, and that creates inequality.
Inequality in the developed world fell for most of the 20th century; we can make it fall for most of the 21st century, too. But it won’t happen without sustained pressure on politicians from electorates.
Think of a public library, worth more for those who cannot afford numerous books. Think of a public waterway or fishing ground. All types of commons have imputed monetary value that together comprise a source of social income. As such, the commons reduces economic inequality and insecurity in society.
Early investment in the lives of disadvantaged children will help reduce inequality, in both the short and the long run.
While many Americans agree that ‘the system is rigged’ economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.
The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.
Going to an interracial high school shaped my understanding of social justice and racial inequality.
It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.
Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality.
Our world faces many grave challenges: Widening conflicts and inequality. Extreme weather and deadly intolerance. Security threats – including nuclear weapons. We have the tools and wealth to overcome these challenges. All we need is the will.
American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn’t be.
American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.
The importance of tackling inequality in Africa cannot be overstated.
Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.
We’ve done a very poor job at really reflecting on our legacy of racial inequality… You see it in the South, but it’s everywhere.
When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.
This is an anxiety driven world – the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the aftermath of the global financial crisis; it’s anxiety about inequality and about computers replacing jobs.
I’m of those who believe that excesses in all matters are not a good idea, whether it’s formation of bubbles, whether it’s excess in the financial market, whether it’s excess of inequality, it has to be watched, it has to be measured, and it has to be anticipated in terms of consequences.
If India breaks your heart with untold inequalities, it also surprises you with the unheralded achievements of its most humble citizens.
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.
Coronavirus has exposed for all what many of us already knew – some of our most important workers have barely enough to live on, and millions are condemned to financial insecurity, inequality and food poverty.
We don’t have a divine right to success. So I agree with a lot of politicians out there when they say, ‘We’ve got serious issues.’ We do: immigration, infrastructure. I think income inequality’s one of them.
Bearing in mind most companies rely on the middle classes in developed countries to sell goods and services throughout the value chain, dealing with inequality is a matter of brutal enlightened self-interest. It’s simple economics: Global stability equals global growth equals profits.
Capitalism is, fundamentally, an economic system that promotes inequality.
Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
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.
