Henry Giroux Quotes

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

It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control... This idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.

Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch.

On GOP Tax Cuts: They'll take food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.

The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class.

Tax the rich. End the wars. Break the power of lobbies in Washington. These are the demands of Occupy Wall Street. They are very important. The US corporations dominate Washington. The big oil companies, Wall Street banks and the military-industrial complex - they rule this country and their influence and power has to be broken.

If you want poor people to work you restore their incentive by giving them less, such as by cutting social services. If you want rich people to work you restore their incentive by giving them more, such as by cutting taxes.

If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out.

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

Government just simply can't do everything for everyone.

Government has really been growing, a lot of largesse, but the people in the real world aren't. And that's what has to change. Government has no conformity at all with the real world.

We need to have the social investments by which to quote unquote distribute some of that wealth.

You cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit.

Government has a role as well in what is referred to as redistributive justice.

The great vice of democracy --- a vice which is exacting a bitter retribution from it at this moment - is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's wealth and somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

Very few governments have the money to meet the needs of their people….The private sector has most of the resources.

Distribution of the wealth of the world is something for which no one sees a practical solution

The free market is the most efficient for utilizing resources and responding to needs, but there are many human needs which find no place on the market.

A budget is a moral document of a nation’s priorities.

With a Socialist government, there will not be a national surplus whilst there continues to be inequality.

If we can spend over $3 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, surely we can find the money to meet the long-term needs of our people.

I want to make sure that we have a tax code that makes sure that everyone benefits, including those in poverty and those middle-income wage earners and those that have already lived the American dream as well as making sure that everyone can receive the benefits of a robust economy and not just the select few.

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