Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

In the past, if I didn't work, I didn't eat but now I feel I can not work and I won't starve.

If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

When we stand up for America, we stand up for what America stands for, which is a safety net for our seniors and really helping our families be able to help themselves.

The best performers in Europe are those who use their welfare states to help people adjust to change.

When work is not underpinned by social protection, people risk falling into poverty traps.

For 60 years, Social Security has meant more than an ID number on a tax form; more than a monthly check in the mail. It reflects our deepest values - our respect for our parents and our belief that all Americans deserve to retire with dignity.

In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults

I do think creating an open free-trade economy but with strong social support is the way to go.

We shouldn't turn the safety net into a hammock. It should actually be a safety net.

The modern welfare state, highly touted as soaking the rich to subsidize the poor, does no such thing. In fact, soaking the rich would have disastrous effects, not just for the rich but for the poor and middle classes themselves. For it is the rich who provide a proportionately greater amount of saving, investment capital, entrepreneurial foresight, and financing of technological innovation that has brought the Unites States to by far the highest standard of living - for the mass of the people - of any country in history.

The greatest crime of welfare isn't that it's a waste of money, but that it's a waste of people.

Throughout history, politicians have used other people's property to buy themselves power. That is the primary achievement of the welfare state.

You have a job but you don't always have job security, you have your own home but you worry about mortgage rates going up, you can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and the quality of the local school because there is no other choice for you.rankly, not everybody in Westminster understands what it's like to live like this and some need to be told that it isn't a game.

The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.

No one is guaranteed a job in this.

And he said that 47%-that's pretty high-47% of Americans are basically welfare bums who are mooching off the government. And then he said, 'My job is not to worry about those people.' You know, where do people get this stuff that Mitt Romney is a heartless, calculating c**ksucker?

A job for your family, a paycheck in your mailbox - they're the ultimate proof that your state is doing things right!

When Americans are worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, Congress and the president must work together to lift our economy and restore hope. That is the course the New Direction Congress will continue in the days and weeks ahead.

A discourse for broad-based political change is crucial for developing a politics that speaks to a future that can provide sustainable jobs, decent health care, quality education and communities of solidarity and support for young people.

Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.

Democrats are firm believers in the welfare state for their own constituents, whether that's a crack addict mother of five or a Wall Street banker.

If we have more people on the receiving end of government - more people as the middle class becomes sucked in more and more to these entitlement programs, for example - then we're going to be in a place where it's going to be hard to go back. It's going to be hard to go back again. It's going to be hard to take away stuff. It's not impossible.

I'm not a single mom with two jobs, trying to get by, every day. I have much more support than most women, around this world, and I have the financial means to have a home and help with care and food.