Alex Pareene Quotes

Tax cuts for the rich defund the critical public programs on which American families depend.

The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot - too much, in retrospect - about the rich.

So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, 'Where is faith being put into action here?'

The worry in Labour circles is that, when pressed, Gordon Brown instinctively moved to cut the benefits of the poor rather than upset businesses and the wealthy.

When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

Let's means-test benefits - let's means-test Social Security and Medicare and make the rich pay more for these benefits.

Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.

Republicans look after the rich, and Democrats focus on the needs of the middle class. Neither of them looks after the poor.

I don't think they [Congress] ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.

In a morally adjusted economy ... the rich should not get richer if the poor get poorer.

I don’t have anything against the rich. I just want some of their money to pay for essential services.

Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.

Israel's middle class is paying for those below it, and that's fine, but also for those who are above it, and that's very wrong.

I don't subscribe to the view that people who are better off don't want to live in a more equal society.

Spreading the wealth punishes success while setting America on course for a greater dependency on government.

Conventional wisdom on government's role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax; government transfer payments have become less progressive.

For those of you who don't understand Reaganomics, it's based on the principle that the rich and the poor will get the same amount of ice. In Reaganomics, however, the poor get all of theirs in winter.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

We have a lot of things we give away to people who are very, very wealthy in this country. And I'm not sure that our federal government can afford that.

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they're wrong. It's just the opposite.

We don't need to bring down the rich folk to help the poor.

You know and I know and economists know that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

Sometimes Republicans engage in number-crunching analysis that doesn't always take the neediest into account.

Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.

I mean, the Obama position has been, 'We think government ought to be spending this money, not the people who earn it.'