Walter Benn Michaels Quotes

I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.

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

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.

70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

Money can't buy poverty.

The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain. Probably, they were the richest.

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don't accept is the idea that some folks won't even get a chance.

Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'

Poor children fare worse than rich children on just about everything that social scientists measure.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

The poor developed an envy and an extreme jealousy, born of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and contempt.

The capacity of children to become self-sufficient and successful adults is compromised not only by monetary poverty, but by poverty of experience, influence, and expectation

The inequality that exists today, … derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity …

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

… perceptions of poverty have gone up because there’s been rising inequality.

a kid should have an equal shot at a good life in our city, regardless of what part of town they happen to be born in.

Nobody would deny that if someone was a billionaire in 1962, his billions are going to affect all of his descendants. The reverse is also true. The lack of education, material, and finances for a slave are going to affect the descendants of that individual as well.

The biggest problem in America is most people believe poor people are poor because they are lazy.

I am but a generation removed from poverty and despair. Where would I be today if there had never been an America? What kind of lives or future would my children have if this was not a land of opportunity?

There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.

Poverty is unnecessary.

Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.