John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

You can't help the poor by becoming one of them.

Let’s make the poor richer.

Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.

People don't need to become more aware of poverty - they need to know how to end it.

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty

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.

Now, you might say – “But why should we pay people for doing what they’re supposed to do?” It’s a fair question – but think of it this way: Every other anti-poverty program that’s been tried has failed to get the national poverty rate below 11 percent... Why shouldn’t we experiment with a program built around the one strategy that has proven time and again to work wonders – capitalism?

If you really want to end income inequality, I've got the way to fix it. People who don't work shouldn't get any income.

If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world. This is becoming the richest, and the poorest Country in the world. Why? Why, on account of an unequal distribution of the money.

We've got to take care of the poor.

There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I would like to solemnly reaffirm, that poverty is not a fatality.

The answers to feeding hungry children is not fewer dollars to feed hungry children, it's to do more. It is to raise the minimum wage. It is to increase, not dismantle, the earned income tax credit. It is to make college more affordable for more middle class families, not more expensive. These are the things that grow our middle class.

When they seek to cut programs that help families living in poverty, I will fight them every step of the way.

By helping the poor, we must be able to remove their poverty. By extending help to one here and one there in the form of providing food will not remove poverty

I have to address the economic conditions of everybody, including, and perhaps first, those who are poor.

What we need is a safety net that lifts people out of poverty - that helps them earn a good paycheck so they can support themselves.

I know that there are many excellent arguments for a universal form of basic income. Since everyone would get it, it would remove the stigma that dogs recipients of assistance and 'entitlements'.

Expanding the EITC can get us close to a universal basic minimum income.

There's enough wealth in the world that no one should go without.

While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.

You are not going to lift everybody out of poverty through the kindness of wealthy people.

I've always thought my main concern is to alleviate the burdens on people, who were earning less money, perhaps than £80,000.