Pankaj Mishra Quotes

The world is richer than ever, and the gaps between rich and poor are wider.

China is a country, still, of great contrast. While hundreds of millions of people are part of the middle class and yearn for things made in America - American brands, movies, music - there are other hundreds of millions of people throughout China who are living on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day.

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.

If everybody lives in the same way, there's something almost narcotizing about it, but the true misery of economic class difference is knowing that you can't have what somebody else does.

One of the fundamental questions of today's world is undoubtedly the question of equitable globalisation.

No one can say how long the process of human extinction might take, but as it proceeds, the same global order will prevail that always prevails: rich nations will find ways to protect themselves and make themselves comfortable, while the poor nations and the poor people of the planet will suffer.

Inequality, he argued, is necessary to generate the savings that growth requires.

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

Although the market and opportunities for consumption seem to offer a counterbalance to the government's authoritarian powers, many Chinese are ambivalent about the forces of Westernization and marketization and the rapidly growing gap between rich and poor

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

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

Wild globalisation has benefited some, but it's been a catastrophe for most.

I don't believe that killing the French model in order to become the U.K. or the United States overnight is the solution. You have a big debate on inequality there, and for our society, a lot of inequality would not be bearable.

We are dealing with the greater challenges of globalisation. It is generating, in many cases, an increase in the levels of inequality in societies... that is undesirable.

The world is hugely unequal.

Economic inequality is a corrosive force that undermines economic growth, puts a brake on the fight against poverty, and sparks social unrest.

I think, unfortunately, we've always lived in a world of massive inequality: inequality between the haves and the have-nots, inequality between men and women that not only exists temporally but geographically as well.

The greatest difficulty with the world is not its ability to produce, but the unwillingness to share.

We live increasingly in a world of haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable riches. Some enjoy rights that are completely denied to others. Relative inequalities are exploding, and the world's poorest, despite all the advances of globalisation, may even be getting poorer.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

What I worry about is the lack of understanding in society around the world that there is a divide in the world between those who have and those who do not.

The two great aims of industrialism - replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy - seem close to fulfillment.

It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.

As the rich consume more and more, they are clearly not going to want to downgrade their own status.

I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.