Billy Gardell Quotes

In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.

The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues, and that's not their concern.

I'm just a normal working class boy from Belfast.

Apparently, there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer.

In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.

Undoubtedly there is a difference between people with money having access to the arts that people from working-class backgrounds don't have, but that's not their fault. I'm not taking anything away from these brilliant actors who are doing great stuff in Hollywood. A lot of them are my friends.

I think that, often, actors represent what they're not. You get people who define the aristocracy who are not aristocratic - they're lower-middle class or working class. An awful lot of your so-called angry young actors have grown up in extreme bourgeois comfort. It really is surprisingly common.

There is a lot more opportunity now, and I welcome all the conversations we are having about diversity, about women and about class... I come from a very working-class background, and I think the class thing is still probably more tricky.

Trump tapped into a lot of middle-class and working-class disillusion with the political establishment and into economic worries and resentments that ballooned in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that looks out for the working-class citizens.

I always think British films work best when they're very honest to a particular part of England. 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' was true to middle-class people, 'Bend it Like Beckham' was faithful to the Indian community, and 'Billy Elliot' was faithful to the miners.

I am the typical British aspiring working class. To be called 'elite' by people who have inherited wealth and run hedge funds or worked in the City of London, I don't criticise them for it, but the idea is frankly laughable. Just ridiculous.

a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class. ... You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $65 billion family fortune?

we should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren't as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe — and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America's working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.

I think what you've got are millions of people who are in trouble today. They really are. They're confused. They're working longer hours for lower wages. They're seeing productivity going up but their kids are worse off economically than they are. They're looking at a campaign finance system in politics and they see corruption, big money buying elections. Nobody in Congress is listening to them.

He who before was the money owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his laborer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other hesitant, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but a hiding.

The class war is over.

Increasing the minimum wagewill put billions annually into the Social Security trust fund.

[A]s we celebrate 75 years of the minimum wage, we must also recognize that it is no longer achieving its potential impact in our economy or for America's working families. Every American deserves the chance to build a better life for his or her family - and raising the minimum wage will provide that opportunity.

I've had very little negative pushback. I think people in the Senate know that I have believed, for a number of years, and have been outspoken that we need to listen to what the American people are telling us, and we need to focus more on the well-being of people who make lower wages, $50,000 and below.

I make films about working class people. All my films have always been about that. For example, the brothel is a workplace. It's aberrant, but a workplace nonetheless. I was more interested as opposed to glamorizing and saying, oh, this is a great erotic place, it's a place of business. The commodity is sex.

We don't have a manufacturing base. We don't have a middle-class jobs growing at all. All we have is a few rich people and a service industry to service them.

I have visited the laid off factory workers and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country and they are forgotten, but they're not gonna be forgotten long. These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice!

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

Hey, hey, the working man, the working man like me. I ain't never been on welfare, that's one place I won't be.