Branko Milanovic Quotes

The distribution of wealth is just as important as its creation.

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

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.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.

Wealth inequality has increased.

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children.

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

By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then.

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

There is a legitimate concern about wealth distribution in the United States, but the answer is not to scapegoat any individual who makes over $200,000 per year and to try to sell the fraud that the government can equitably take the money of those who have earned it and give it to those who haven't.

The messenger matters. When people of modest means complain about inequality, it usually gets written off as class warfare, but when billionaires complain, the problem is redefined.

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

Redistribution of wealth has rarely been from the rich to the poor. Usually it is from the poor and middle class to the rich.

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

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

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

The top 1 percent in the state increased its share of the income from 10 to 22 percent. The bottom 80 percent of the state is declining. That’s just a fairness fact.

To be concerned about inequality is not engaging in class warfare.

Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.

Income inequality is one thing, but a permanent division into the haves and have-nots is an entirely different thing - and much less acceptable.

There's not a lot of wealth throughout all the country shared equally.

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

Obama's economic policies widened the gap between the rich and the poor.