Friedrich Hayek Quotes

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

The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.

In financial terms, my sense is that the distribution of wealth, unequal as it is, is self-perpetuating, and, especially in a linked and accelerating world, the rich get ever more quickly richer while the poor get ever more speedily poorer.

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

I'm very keen that we have this debate about the good parts of inequality and the bad parts of inequality. It's not a one-sided thing.

There's enough wealth in the world that no one should go without.

In the ideal world, philanthropy should be redundant or at least it should be at the edges, as innovation or risk capital. But it's far from an ideal world; the wealthy are cornering more and more opportunities and resources from this planet. So, the big challenge for philanthropy is... can it engage with the distribution of wealth itself?

The miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn't enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need...But could anything seriously be done about it?

Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go not to the child in the greatest need but to the children of the highest bidder-the child of parents who, more frequently than not, have also enjoyed the same abundance when they were schoolchildren.

I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.

Public policy today is favoring the rich, not the poor. It's not addressing the needs of the poor.

To say that people around the world deserve the same, the same life that we have in the United States, the same freedoms that we have, that seems to me, humble. I think it's humble to say that the United States, which has been given so much, should give back.

Stockholders are used to a certain kind of global capitalism. This version is very hard on the environment and very hard on people below a certain fiscal level. It is a calculated, systematic weakening of people. Many labour, a few benefit. Try talking about cleaning up the place with these people. The hostility is incredible.

Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty.

What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets, seeing the one hath no more protection from the commonwealth than the other?

The difference between the very wealthy and the working poor has grown. We raise that minimum wage and we move forward with the vision of this president that we have, which is everyone pays their fair share.

Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.

We talk of globalization, and how much money is needed for the education of children in the world, their liberation and rehabilitation just $9 billion which is four days of military expense. Just four days. Nine billion dollars is nothing. But what Americans spent on ice cream just 20 percent of this. One fifth of what you spend on ice creams could bring the children out of the clutches of their masters and put them to school.

They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality.

Environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot.

If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out.

The problem is not scarcity; the problem is power.

Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty.