Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

You have six of the ten wealthiest counties in America surround Washington, D.C., and the poor and middle class are getting squeezed while people at the top and people with influence in government seem always to be doing better.

The interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

Some members of the ruling class are making a concerted effort to expand the wealth gap.

Our democracies are increasingly captured by a ruling class that seeks to perpetuate its privileges.

Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?

It is staggering that in the 21st century, half of the world's population - that's three and a half billion people - own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus.

I was told that the privileged and the people formed two nations.

Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.

I was told, continued Egremont, that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension.

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

The two great aims of industrialism - replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy - seem close to fulfillment.

In 1750, 75 percent of people on the planet worked to support the top 25 percent.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The rich are richer, and the poor are poorer, in the city than elsewhere; and, as a rule, the greater are the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor.

There's a small amount of super-wealthy people that want to maintain their billions and billions of dollars. Those are the people who are really making the decisions.

In bad times, the rich usually get richer.

It is the unvarying law that the wealth of the community will be in the hands of the few ...

The middle class serves as a bridge between the haves and the have-nots. If it goes, so goes political stability.

No country can exist without a ruling class. The governing class in a America is a rank that is for sale.

The middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table.

This country is very good at creating wealth, but not very good at distributing it.

Income inequality is one thing, but a permanent division into the haves and have-nots is an entirely different thing - and much less acceptable.

You can only choose between rich and poor. The middle class is gone.