Glenn Loury Quotes

Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.

The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity.

I urge the Bush Administration to rethink its priorities. We can't talk about community values without being prepared to invest in those very same communities.

Government has a role as well in what is referred to as redistributive justice.

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

Destroy poverty, that source of crime, by assuring to each the satisfaction of all needs! And how difficult is this to achieve?

It is right to be forward in the defense of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.

Every American has a right to food, housing, and health care - and we can afford to provide it if billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Society and Government should together give priority to the poorest of poor and make efforts to provide affordable health services.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

Liberals measure compassion by counting the number of people receiving government help.

The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some [wealth] redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody's got a shot.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

I hear a lot of cries of socialism and certainly real disguises of "Why should I share my money with these people?" We have to get back to "we." It's important to get back to "we" not just "I."

The welfare state is institutionalized crime - 'organized plunder,' as the French economist Frederic Bastiat called it. It systematizes what is intrinsically wrong: forcing some people to support others. The Democrats favor the indefinite expansion of the welfare state, perpetually increasing the ratio of force to freedom in society.

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

There are different varieties and forms of capitalism. There are priorities within the capitalist society so that you can have countervailing forces come in and empower your working people and your poor people. There are capitalist societies that do not have poverty. America needs to understand that.

[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.

You can't lift people out of poverty simply by tweaking the tax system, or by raising the minimum wage by a few cents, or by reducing student debt slightly. These might be necessary components of a larger anti-poverty program, but you have to accept they are pieces of a much larger puzzle.

We need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in the society.

I want us to raise the national minimum wage, because people who live in poverty should not - who work full-time should not still be in poverty.

The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.

At some point in your life you have to engage with the fact that you are part of a society. Yeah the individual is the most important facet in society but unless every individual is the recipient of free health care, free education decent affordable housing and a proper pension then only the rich and powerful will be individuals and the rest of us will be exploited by them.

I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.