William O. Douglas Quotes

We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.

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.

The rich are few everywhere, the poor many.

There is nothing in Socialism a little age or a little money will not cure.

In the United States you have socialism for the rich and free markets for the poor.

I think in the last thirty years, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. It is not something that you can see with rose-colored glasses.

Obama's economic policies widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

The worldview of the Left is a battle between rich and poor

The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.

The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism.

Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

If you bail out every investment bank that gets in trouble, that's not capitalism, that's socialism for the rich

A welfare state is frightened of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.

The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.

...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.

The class war is over.

I don't believe in a redistribution of wealth.

We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us: this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I?

We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We'll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won't be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up.

I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.

There's a wealth gap that is happening, and that is all over the world, you know? The rich are getting richer and holding a higher percentage of money or wealth that's out there.

Bush already gave obscene tax breaks to people like me and Warren Buffet, and we are saying it's not fair.

Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

There is a legitimate concern about wealth distribution in the United States, but the answer is not to scapegoat any individual who makes over $200,000 per year and to try to sell the fraud that the government can equitably take the money of those who have earned it and give it to those who haven't.