David Harsanyi Quotes

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

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

Tax breaks and other financial breaks that favor the wealthiest among us do not create greater prosperity for all; they simply siphon off more and more money to those who already have it, and more and more money away from those who do not.

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.

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

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

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.

American economic greatness has never trickled down from the top.

Globalization in the aggregate generates wealth, no question. But it gets concentrated.

In 1985, the top five percent of the households - the wealthiest five percent - had net worth of $8 trillion - which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.

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.

Inequalities of wealth lead to a dispersion in wealth for all.

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.

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

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.

Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power.

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

The stock market is a playground for rich. The top 1 percent control 35 percent of stock wealth. As long as the stock market grows faster than the rest of the economy, the rich will keep getting richer

Talking about income inequality, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel uncomfortable. It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how to make the pie bigger.

If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.

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

In my view, there is no justice when the 15 wealthiest people in this country in the last two years, saw their wealth increase by $170 billion. That is more wealth acquired in a two year period than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

This kind of inequality - a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling...it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity... That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.