Mike Harding Quotes

It says anybody can make it, because we're all on a level playing field. But we're not on a level playing field. That 's precisely the point, and that's what the rich don't want to look at. They don't want to recognize that they're not producing wealth at all. They're hoarding wealth. That's different.

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.

In the last recession, 99 percent of us have lost wealth, but did you know that the top 1 percent increased their wealth five times? It tells you they create recessions so they get wealthier.

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.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

In the United States you have socialism for the rich and free markets for the poor.

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.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer.

There is far too little discussion in Washington about the collapse of the middle class , almost no discussion at all about the incredible income inequality and wealth inequality in this country, and the fact that we're moving toward an oligarch form of society.

There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.

Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class.

We're seeing a new 'Gilded Age,' where inheritance is a deciding factor in who becomes the wealthiest.

American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking.

I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

First of all, this whole idea of this one percent versus the 99 percent, it's a false statistic. There's nobody that is wealthy saying, let's go get the people that aren't. First of all, there's no versus. He's creating a false class warfare in a country where there is no class structure.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Affluence creates poverty.

The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels that are compatible with democratic ideals.

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

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own - nobody.

Thomas Piketty assembles the facts to prove a central point about trickle-down economics: Doesn't work. Never did. He has cold, hard data showing how the rich keep getting richer and how the playing field is rigged against working families.