Ai Weiwei Quotes

China is soon to be probably the most powerful nation in the world, but they only making like $10,000 a year, and that's doing it. They're balling on $10,000 a year, and this is the strongest nation? But it's a billion people. The way it breaks down, if you really look at it, it's still built on the poor, on the backs of hundreds of millions of destitute, impoverished farmers that you'll never see. You just see Shanghai and you see Hong Kong.

I think that we've had an economy that's been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one.

While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.

The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

The main issue [of the Scientific Revolution] is that the people in the industrialised countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialised countries are at best standing still: so the gap between the industrialised countries and the rest is widening every day. On the world scale this is the gap between the rich and the poor.

The world is richer than ever, and the gaps between rich and poor are wider.

A little over 5% of the world's population produces almost 29% of the world's goods and services.

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.

One of the biggest challenges facing the globe is the gap that exists in the wealth and standards of living enjoyed by the world's nations.

Globalization has benefited middle-income less than either richer or poorer countries.

The problem of indebtedness is part of a larger and more comprehensive problem, namely the existing imbalances in the international economic order.

We see a small number of countries getting rich at the cost of impoverishment of a large number of other countries.

China became an economic power with few equals. By 2010 China gad overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy in terms of GDP, China’s transformation consistently drew one ideas beyond it shores.

This globalization is lifting up hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The Left needs to see that.

If the countries of Europe and of North America can be almost uniformly prosperous, we don't see why we cannot be allowed to be a little prosperous.

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.

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.

China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment.

The benefits of growth have not trickled down. Income inequalities have become one of the biggest global challenges, attracting growing attention not only in academic literature but also among policymakers globally.

Wealthier countries have the luxury of entertaining fears the rest of the world cannot afford.

We Need a RESET IN THE WAY THE ECONOMY GROWS Around the World

This is class war on an international scale, and power is in the hands of those who control the international economic system.

We live in a world community, and economic contact has partly contributed to that. It’s also the case that economic opportunity opened up by economic contact has helped to a great extent to reduce poverty in many parts of the world.

I understand we're on our way to being a Third World country. Could we just stop at 'Second World' before we get there?

An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.