Tim Ryan Quotes

This country is very good at creating wealth, but not very good at distributing it.

Too much of the GDP over the last generation has gone to too few of the people.

No matter how we name and dissect inequality, we must keep explaining the larger downside of such concentrated extreme wealth.

There's a wealth gap that is happening, and that is all over the world, you know? The rich are getting richer and holding a higher percentage of money or wealth that's out there.

It is the unvarying law that the wealth of the community will be in the hands of the few ...

Inequality is a good thing. You can’t have a capitalistic system without it. But we have excessive inequality now. Virtually all the benefits are going to a small group of people.

There’s just too much money in the hands of too few.

Today, half of the national income goes to the richest 10 percent. In 2007, the top 1 percent controlled 34.6 percent of the wealth—significantly more than the bottom 90 percent who control just 26.9 percent.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

The United States is the richest and also the most unequal country in the world.

I think inequality has gone past the point where it's helping us all get rich, and it's really becoming a serious threat.

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.

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

If the wealthy get wealthier, no one has to become one penny poorer.

Our family's fortune is growing faster than ever. We're a part of a small number of American families that own most of the country's wealth. But having so much in the hands of so few can't be good for America.

What's dangerous is the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals.

You've got the top 400 Americans owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Most folks do not think that is right.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

There’s a mal-distribution in wealth in this country. Entitlements end up going to the rich anyway. Some of them should be attacked. The ones who rip us off, the ones who get bailed out.

This growing inequality … is not only morally wrong, it’s bad economics, because when middle class families have less to spend, guess what. Businesses have fewer consumers.

A lot of my book, 'The Price of Inequality,' is about why there has been an increase in rent-seeking.

Our economic system has enabled companies and individuals to use their power and influence to capture and retain an ever-increasing share of the benefits of economic growth while the benefits for the poorest in society have shrunk.

Economic inequality is a corrosive force that undermines economic growth, puts a brake on the fight against poverty, and sparks social unrest.