Jim Hightower Quotes

Texas is a great place to be rich and a terrible place to be poor. It's got the highest percentage of people without health insurance in the country. If you get injured on the job, good luck getting workers' comp. And God help you if you're poor and mentally ill.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs aren't paying enough to keep families out of poverty.

These Americans are among the working poor with full-time jobs earning $5.15 an hour. Millions fall into this boat, even more when you consider that the poverty line has not been adequately adjusted to reflect the true level of poverty in this country.

You know who got a Merry Christmas? The richest 1 percent, that’s who. Republicans in Congress made sure of that, protecting billions in taxpayer giveaways. In tough times, Republicans stripped 1.3 million American of jobless benefits when they could not find a job, kicking them to the curb during Christmas…

We have faster growth rates for low wage industries than for high wage industries

We cannot continue to have the upper class wealty getting richer and richer, the middle class shrinking and 43 million living in poverty.

Chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits, or workfare.

I think that on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality and poverty alleviation, and those issues are so important.

If there are not jobs or adequate forms of social protection, there is not enough income to create the consumption base that drives demand and sustainable economic growth.

Women do two thirds of the world's work. Yet they earn only one tenth of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor.

Although they are some of the hardest working folks I know, rural Americans earn, on average, $11,000 less than their urban counterparts each year. And they are more likely to live in poverty.

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families.

While some people are certainly seeing economic benefits, many others are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance and struggling to make ends meet.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works a full time job should have to live in poverty. That's a fundamental value proposition, an article of faith in our country that I know an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

Economic issues are a subset of social justice. Social justice is unimaginable without economic justice. Isn't that obvious?

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

The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case.

People who go to work every day and perform the services essential to keeping our economy functioning deserve to live above the poverty level.