Lupe Fiasco Quotes

Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.

Worrying about the poor is one thing. To contend that equality is necessary for growth is an altogether different and more radical idea.

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.

In America, the 1 percent and the 10 percent are doing just fine, but the people who are bearing the brunt of this economy are the ones who suffer.

While economic development [in Egypt] made a few people rich, it left many more worse off. As people felt less and less free, they also felt less and less provided for.

The world has also learned that economic growth, by itself, cannot close the gap between rich and poor.

In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

I was very sad for many days when I discovered that in the world there were poor people and rich people; and the strange thing is that the existence of the poor did not cause me as much pain as the knowledge that at the same time there were people who were rich.

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

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.

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

The developing world is poor. It needs capital.

Income inequality is the central problem all the way across the world.

Poverty, discrimination and ignorance decrease growth.

Inequality of income is bad for everyone, not just the poor and the middle class.

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.

We have a choice: we can allow the growing disparity between rich and poor to continue unimpeded, or we can take action to budget responsibly and strengthen and expand the middle class. If we want this economy - and this country - to meet its full potential, the choice is simple.

There's not a lot of wealth throughout all the country shared equally.

Today we hear that the gains from economic growth accrue to the highest-income earners while the standard of living of the poor and middle America stagnates and the gap between the richest and the poorest grows ever wider. That portrait of the country is wrong.

We need to focus much more on the bottom 40 per cent. They are losing ground, and the fact that they are losing ground blocks social mobility and brings down economic growth.

We can't have all the concentration of wealth in a few places in this country. We've got to create economic opportunity and new industries in communities that feel left behind.

I don't really care much about what the top one per cent earn. The gap we ought to care about in wealth is between the middle and the bottom.

What good is a high GDP if some, or even many, Americans are left behind?

Capitalism with near-full employment was an impressive spectacle. But a growth in wealth is not at all the same thing as reducing poverty. A universal paean was raised in praise of growth. Growth was going to solve all problems. No need to bother about poverty. Growth will lift up the bottom and poverty will disappear without any need to pay attention to it. The economists, who should have known better, fell in with the same cry.