Angus Deaton Quotes

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.

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

It is true that globalization has fueled greater income inequality. But much of this increase should be welcomed, not condemned. There is nothing inherently bad about inequality. Whether it is bad depends on how it comes about and what it does.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist

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

The greatest issue before the people—the question of special privilege and unequal distribution of wealth.

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.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

Extreme inequality is no temporary blip. It is hard-wired into our economies.

Wealth is used to entrench inequality, not to trickle down and solve it.

A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

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.

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

Distribution of the wealth of the world is something for which no one sees a practical solution