Barack Obama Quotes

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

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.

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

I don't believe in trickle-down economics. I don't think that people who have the most are inclined to share it, generally.

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

I believe in capitalism but in fair capitalism.

What the Democrats do with income inequality is punish the people at the top of whatever bracket we're talking about. If it's income, they want to raise taxes. They want to impugn, punish, institute more regulations, just make it tougher and tougher and do what they can to take money from them.

I am going to attack income inequality and I think I have a pretty good plan to do so. I don't just tell you what I'm against. I tell you what I'm for and how I would do it.

To a certain extent I don't see any real need for socialism in the United States immediately, but things change and it may be that there will come a need for partial changes in our economy.

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.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

Sometime, while I wasn't paying attention, trickle-down economics got respectable.

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

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.

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 New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

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

The distribution of wealth is just as important as its creation.

Socialism is that policy or theory which aims at securing by the action of the central democratic authority a better distribution, and in due subordination thereunto a better production, of wealth than now prevails.

It cannot be said that we dislike paying taxes for the welfare of those less well off than we are, so we develop a draping cover of economic and social theory.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

American economic greatness has never trickled down from the top.

We need to create an economy that works for everyone, not crony capitalism and unchecked corporate consolidation.

Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.