Joseph Schumpeter Quotes

Upward mobility across classes peaked in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Most of the gains of the 20th century were achieved en masse; it wasn't so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people rising from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all classes. You didn't have to be exceptional to rise.

Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.

But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

Our nation’s political spectrum is not left to right, but top to bottom. People can locate themselves on this rich-to-poor pole for this is not a theoretical positioning: It’s based on our actual experience with money and power.

We do not postpone the participation of the lower classes of our people in the profits of economic enterprise, and in other countries, they do postpone it. In the long run, I think our policy is better, and we stand by it.

It says anybody can make it, because we're all on a level playing field. But we're not on a level playing field. That 's precisely the point, and that's what the rich don't want to look at. They don't want to recognize that they're not producing wealth at all. They're hoarding wealth. That's different.

What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're lookin' at it

The 1970s were the height of social mobility. College was accessible. My grandfather was a poor immigrant who went to a public school in Ohio, and my father went to Harvard. That wasn't unusual. There was a feeling that anything was possible and you didn't have to be born into money to have a successful life. Now, people don't believe in the idea that anything is possible. We have more inequality than we've had ever before and a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

The middle class in America is at a tipping point. It will not last another generation if we don't boldly change course now.

I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

We don't need to solve the problem of the rich-poor gap. We need to solve the problem of common prosperity.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.

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.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India.

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities and ensure a reasonable standard of living for the bottom 20 percent.

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own - nobody.