106 Income Distribution Quotes
Following is our list of income distribution quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about distribution of wealth.
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Famous Income Distribution Quotes
The distribution of wealth is just as important as its creation. — William Randolph Hearst
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned. — Thomas Sowell
Promote fair opportunities, increase the income of low-income people, expand middle-income groups, standardise the order of income distribution and standardise wealth accumulation mechanisms. — Xi Jinping
The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. — John Maynard Keynes
It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous, but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people. . . — Victoria Woodhull
Rich man down and poor man up-they are still not even. — Yiddish Proverbs
Absolute justice demands that mens incomes and rewards should ... vary, and that some have more than others-so long as human justice is upheld by the provision of equal opportunity for all. — Sayyid Qutb
Profit sharing in the form of stock distributions to workers would help to democratize the ownership of America's vast corporate wealth which is today appallingly undemocratic and unhealthy. — Walter Reuther
When wealth is centralized, the people are dispersed. When wealth is distributed, the people are brought together. — Confucius
Yes, free markets tend to produce unequal incomes. We should not be ashamed of that. On the contrary, our system is the envy of the world and should be a source of pride. — Arthur C. Brooks
The modern economy isn't about the redistribution of wealth - it's about the redistribution of time. — Douglas Coupland
Greater wealth, greater suffering Lesser wealth, lesser suffering. — Tibetan Proverbs
Monetary policy is about the redistribution of wealth and income from the masses to the classes. — Russell Napier
Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. — Matthew Arnold
Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. — Henry Hazlitt
Short Income Distribution Quotes
- If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out. — Bill Gates
- The wealth of a country is its working people. — Theodor Herzl
- Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth... — Dolores Huerta
- We are all are equal, but some pay higher tax rates than others. — Jeff Rich
- The rich get richer, and the poor get babies. — American Proverbs
- Inequality is the root of social evil. — Pope Francis
- If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets. — Sayings
Income Distribution Image Quotes
Income Inequality Quotes
By tying minimum wage to money supply, the poor's income would rise and fall with the rise and fall in money supply. — Max Keiser
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
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
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. — Sayings
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
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
I think the issue of income and wealth inequality is in fact a moral issue. — Bernie Sanders
In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. — Sayings
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
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
Distribution Of Wealth Quotes
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. — Bertrand de Jouvenel
If our economic system is to survive, there has to be a better distribution of wealth ... we can't have a system where some people live in superfluous, inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit. — Sylvia Pankhurst
Moving to a cooperatively organized enterprise is one of the best ways to really do something about unequal distribution of wealth. — Richard D. Wolff
Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers. — Thomas Piketty
The problem in Guatemala is that there is no solution to the issue of human rights. The problem is militarization, it is the injust distribution of wealth. It is intolerance of the indigenous, it is discrimination and marginalization. — Rigoberta Menchu
Modern government has become a universal transfer agency that utilizes the political process for distributing vast measures of income and wealth. It preys on millions of victims in order to allocate valuable goods and services to its beneficiaries. — Hans F. Sennholz
All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence. — Aristotle
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
Wealth Inequality Quotes
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
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. — Nelson Mandela
I recognize that globalization has helped many people rise out of poverty, but it has also damned many others to starve to death. It is true that global wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities have also grown and new poverty arisen. — Pope Francis
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett
Low interest rates wipe out savers and devastate middle-class workers. The banksters have orchestrated this wealth transference of trillions, from the poor to the very wealthy. At the expense of everybody who isn't at the top. — Max Keiser
A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property. — Harold Laski
I don’t object to some people being richer, even much richer, than others. I object to gain of wealth through political connections rather than earning it by merit. — Edward O. Thorp
How long until we measure wealth inequality in FLOPS? — Andrej Karpathy
He who eats and drinks with the rich leaves the table hungry — Greek Proverbs
In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not their money to their lives. It preoccupies their thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and the world. — Herbert Croly
Income Redistribution Quotes
Si tenés gobiernos populistas que lo único que proponen es la redistribución del ingreso, el gasto público que castigan al ahorro, te va a ir mal. Argentina hace 100 años que hace esto, entró al siglo XX siendo el país más rico del mundo y ahora somos un desastre. — Javier Milei
Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution. — Ben Shapiro
Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rick as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told. — Ha-Joon Chang
Are we interested in treating the symptoms of poverty and economic stagnation through income redistribution and class warfare, or do we want to go at the root causes of poverty and economic stagnation by promoting pro-growth policies that promote prosperity? — Paul Ryan
Liberals don't mind discussing who is more patriotic if patriotism is defined as redistributing income and vetoing the Pledge of Allegiance. Only if patriotism is defined as supporting America do they get testy and drone on about 'McCarthyism.' — Ann Coulter
Government income redistribution programs produce the same result as theft. In fact, that's what a thief does; he redistributes income. The difference between government and thievery is mostly a matter of legality. — Walter E. Williams
A safety net for the poor indeed requires some level of income redistribution. — Ari Fleischer
The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice. — Garet Garrett
If the economy is not expanding, the redistribution of income becomes a zero-sum game. And therefore, all the class struggle - and it becomes much more vicious. — Manmohan Singh
I believe that the Welfare State redistributes poverty and reduces income. As Karl Kraus once said of psychoanalysis, the Welfare State is the disease which it purports to cure. — Arnold Kling
Economic Inequality Quotes
A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. — Bernie Sanders
God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Sayings
I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery — Mother Jones
To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta. — Joko Widodo
I'm against having a Fed. It's socialism in its worst form. But until the Fed is gotten rid of, the only economic variable the poor have to counteract the injustices of the Fed is the minimum wage law. — Max Keiser
When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money. — Alice Adams
The coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty. — Lucy Parsons
When fewer workers have unions, the standard of living falls for everyone and the gap between the rich and poor grows. — John Sweeney
What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger? — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The present age handed over the workers, each alone and defenseless, to the unbridled greed of competitors... so that a very few and exceedingly rich men have laid a yoke of almost slavery on the unnumbered masses of non-owning workers. — Pope Leo XIII
People Writing About Income Distribution
More Income Distribution Quotes
Kelsoism is not accepted by modern scientific economics as a valid and fruitful analysis of the distribution of income but rather it is regarded as an amateurish and cranky fad. — Paul Samuelson
A premise of the new city is that we want a society to be as egalitarian as possible. For this purpose, quality-of-life distribution is more important than income distribution. [And quality of life includes] a living environment as free of motor vehicles as possible. — Enrique Penalosa
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
Only now are increasing numbers of political and social scientists beginning to realize that Kelso's theories provide a private-property-based alternative to the imminent passage of a government-distributed "guaranteed income" or "negative income tax." — Hazel Henderson
By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways. — Robert Higgs
If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world. This is becoming the richest, and the poorest Country in the world. Why? Why, on account of an unequal distribution of the money. — Will Rogers
Cities that tend of have better schools for middle-income families, they tend to have much better prospects for kids moving up in the income distribution. — Raj Chetty
Most intellectuals outside the field of economics show remarkably little interest in learning even the basic fundamentals of economics. Yet they do not hesitate to make sweeping pronouncements about the economy in general, businesses in particular, and the many issues revolving around what is called 'income distribution'. — Thomas Sowell
The climate change problem is at its heart an ethical problem. It's a problem of income distribution and it's a problem of income distribution with dimensions that we don't usually think about very much. — Ross Garnaut
My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth. — Joseph Stiglitz
In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present. — George Bernard Shaw
The middle class in the rich countries is where the political game is being played. They are voting in elections in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. They are working people in the upper part of the global income distribution. They might on average be happy that the Chinese are doing well, but they are not happy that the Chinese are doing well relative to them. — Branko Milanovic
We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty. — Thomas Pogge
Even in our own agriculture strategy, if we got a great new drought-resistant seed and we managed to get it distributed in the system, we just assumed that it would reach female farmers. That's a false assumption, because women don't interact with agro-dealers. So if you don't develop specific programming to ensure that seed gets in a woman's hands, then the extra income [generated by higher-yielding crops] goes into her husband's hands. — Melinda Gates
The Supreme Court consistently favors organized money and the political privileges of the corporate class. We have a Senate that is more responsive to affluent constituents than to middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of income distribution have no apparent effect at all on the Senate's roll call votes. — Bill Moyers
Income tax in particular in the United States is concentrated on the top half of the income distribution, and very heavily skewed towards the top 10 or even top 1 percent. — Judy Woodruff
If the economy is growing fast, there is call for a distributing income from the rich to the poor to to put in place social safety nets. — Manmohan Singh
It's one thing to maintain that upper-income earners should pay higher tax rates because they are better able to shoulder the burden for essential government services. But it's constitutional blasphemy to claim that the tax code should be used as a weapon against the wealthy and that the state should be the tyrannical arbiter of how income is distributed. — David Limbaugh
In the United States today we have the most unequal wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth - worse than at any time since the 1920s. This is an economy that must be changed in fundamental ways. — Bernie Sanders
The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly. — James C. Scott
Unequal distribution of income is an excessively uneconomic method of getting the necessary saving done. — Joan Robinson
Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing. — Ron Paul
Two-factor economics makes it clear that our economic problem is not what one-factor (labor-centric) thinkers assert: an inequitable distribution of income. It is an inequitable distribution of productive power, from which an unworkable distribution of income results. — Louis O. Kelso
If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor. — Louis O. Kelso
A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function. — Walter Lippmann
The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. ...The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013. — Sayings
If there is any law governing the distribution of income between classes, it still remains to be discovered. — Joan Robinson
The real scientific study of the distribution of wealth has, we must confess, scarcely begun. The conventional academic study of the so-called theory of distribution into rent, interest, wages, and profits is only remotely related to the subject. This subject, the causes and cures for the actual distribution of capital and income among real persons, is one of the many now in need of our best efforts as scientific students of society. — Irving Fisher
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