Leo Varadkar Quotes

The middle class is at the heart of our budget problem.

We have an economy that's really geared toward rewarding the investor class. What are we doing to make sure that people who want to have a middle-class life are able to keep up?

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.

While lawmakers should eschew soaking the rich, that is no excuse for soaking the poor.

It's not class warfare to talk about fairness.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

You want income equality? Everybody can have an equal mediocre salary. That’s what we can afford. Or do you want the opportunity for greatness.

Putting middle class families in jeopardy in order to protect the wealthiest among us isn't consistent with the values and priorities that most Americans share.

Today the salaries of stars are astronomical in comparison with the 20's, but the high cost of today's living and taxes takes a huge bite out of these salaries.

One of the things I get amused by is when my opponent talks about the middle class.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

The middle class has no more to give. The poor have nothing. Let's get it from those who've got it.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

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

It is outrageous and a great inequality that those who already enjoy the greatest advantages from society and who therefore have the greatest interest in its maintenance should also be relieved of taxation while it is drawn instead from the more useful section of the nation …. The more well-established members can, through a relatively smaller portion of their income, support the state far more substantially than can the common man from his … dearly earned wage.

Since Mill, in 1848, wrote his chapter on the future of the working classes, the question of the distribution of wealth has be-come of still greater importance. We cannot look round on the political phenomena of to-day without seeing that this question is at the root of them. We see the perplexity in which men stand, and the divisions springing up in our great political parties, because of the uncertainty of politicians how to grapple with it.

The next time you hear me attacked as a socialist - like tomorrow - remember this: I don't believe that government should take over the grocery store down the street or control the means of production. But I believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.

I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.

I don't want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

We have a choice: we can allow the growing disparity between rich and poor to continue unimpeded, or we can take action to budget responsibly and strengthen and expand the middle class. If we want this economy - and this country - to meet its full potential, the choice is simple.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

The middle class in America is at a tipping point. It will not last another generation if we don't boldly change course now.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.