Thomas Frank Quotes

I think that capitalism in general is responsible, not for the worldwide recession, but for a lot of suffering, both in the United States and around the world.

In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

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

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

We need to tackle extreme inequality because it is morally indefensible and socially corrosive - undermining our health, affecting our well-being, and undermining peaceful societies.

A lot of people, including me, are worried that inequality will lead to bad things.

Poverty is unnecessary.

Reckless capitalism kills black people.

'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River?

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving.

The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

It's true across the U.K. that those who had least to do with causing the economic crisis are carrying the heaviest burden. That's unacceptable.

If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom woud have a lot more.

If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.

The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help. The wealthy have weak incentives to get the right amount of the right thing to those who need it; the poor are in no position to complain if they don’t.

Poverty is the parent of revolution.

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

In a well-governed nation poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a badly governed country wealth is something to be ashamed of.

... an apathetic indifferent meat in a sandwich that has an ever thinning slice of maniacal Plutocratic Gluttony on top and an ever thickening slice of rotten vermin rottening at the bottom.

A rising tide lifts all boats but if you can’t afford a boat, the tide goes up your nose.