Bill de Blasio Quotes

I am going to attack income inequality and I think I have a pretty good plan to do so. I don't just tell you what I'm against. I tell you what I'm for and how I would do it.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

You are not going to lift everybody out of poverty through the kindness of wealthy people.

What the Democrats do with income inequality is punish the people at the top of whatever bracket we're talking about. If it's income, they want to raise taxes. They want to impugn, punish, institute more regulations, just make it tougher and tougher and do what they can to take money from them.

So as a nation, we have a right to be very proud of the successes that we have seen because of the struggle of millions of people to create a less discriminatory society. That is something we should be proud of, but there is one struggle in which not only have we not succeeded but in which we are losing ground and that is the fundamental struggle for economic justice.

Socialists will often talk as if some form of superbly equalized destitution were preferable to "maldistributed" plenty. A national income that is rapidly growing in absolute terms for practically everyone will be deplored because it is making the rich richer.

I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.

Spreading the wealth punishes success while setting America on course for a greater dependency on government.

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they're wrong. It's just the opposite.

I wish the city of San Francisco, bastion of liberalism, were more innovative when it comes to how to spread the wealth.

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.

Pope Francis emphatically does not buy the argument that poverty can be alleviated by the 'trickle down' effects of wealth creation. He is deaf to arguments that the global economy has brought a billion people out of poverty. He is convinced, in short, that the best and only way to expel poverty is fairer distribution of the world's goods.

We need to have the social investments by which to quote unquote distribute some of that wealth.

It's not class warfare to talk about fairness.

Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

The social justice movement of the 21st century is economic development.

I try to deal with the poverty gap - to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

I think it's terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor.

Any discuss about taxes ends up being, are you raising them or lowering them, as the opposed to the question I ask - are we raising them for high income individuals that can afford it, and lowering them for lower income people who really need help. Those old categories don't work, and they're preventing us from solving them problems.

You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.