James Cleverly Quotes

In Britain, the centrally prescribed welfare to work system short-changes the young unemployed. Transport, housing and education are over centralised.

You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

It seems to me that the Conservatives neither recognise the scale of the living standards crisis facing British families nor offer credible answers as to how the British economy or British society can be better in the future.

Workers in decent jobs view the economy as unjust if they or their children have virtually no chance of climbing to a higher rung in the socioeconomic ladder.

If food were free, why work?

I don't know of a Democrat - whether they're a conservative, a centrist or a liberal Democrat - that doesn't think that it's important to have quality jobs that pay decent wages so that families can support themselves, so that they can have the dignity of being able to afford health care, put money aside for pension, buy a home.

In some ways, people forget about average working people, and how they live their lives.

The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.

We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement.

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

The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues, and that's not their concern.

Young people deserve stable employment opportunities and not mountains of debt. When young people can access the middle class, America is strengthened.

People who work full-time in America should not have to live in poverty - simple as that. Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead. Too many people are finding the rungs on the ladder of opportunity further and further apart.

True Americanism recognizes the enormous gravity of the social and labor problems which confront us.

Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people.

The American dream always meant that anybody willing to put in a hard day's work could make a decent living. That's just not true anymore for people without at least some post-high school education.

My - I grew up in - I grew up in public housing. My dad, for most of my life, worked for the post office, which was a terrific job to get because you couldn't lose your job.

We need to give up the idea that economic growth alone can or will reach down to provide good jobs to the chronically unemployed .... Only a strong program of public employment has ever achieved that in the past ...

People say, 'Well, why don't they get another job, why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps?' Well, the people that say that probably have the kind of jobs where they don't work that hard, so maybe they could have another job.

My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a clerk. Until I was thirty-five, I never made more than fifteen thousand dollars a year.

I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom. I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.

Historically, it has required a combination of favorable employment trends and active government intervention to lower the percentage of people in poverty and raise living standards for the working middle class.

Labour was founded to make the lives of working people better and to create more opportunities for everyone. Whether it's aspiring to work as a nurse in a hospital or setting up and running your own business, Labour should be about ensuring fairness so that everyone has the same chance in life to reach their goals.