Michael Lewis Quotes

The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

We have more billionaires than any country but the United States. And Putin can imprison any one of them at a moment’s notice. Do you think he is poor?

You cannot create by decrees conditions which are alien to the very character of the existing economic relations.

In the first phase of economic development you have rising inequality.

There may not be as many rich individuals, but there will be far less poor.

We must expect for a long time yet to see capitalists still striving to obtain the highest possible profits. But observe, that the passion for wealth is certainly in some senses new. It grew up very rapidly at the beginning of the present century; it was not so strong in the last century, when men were much more content to lead a quiet easy life of leisure. The change has really influenced the relations between men; but in the future it is quite possible that the scramble for wealth may grow less intense, and a change in the opposite direction take place.

The people are rejecting so-called free trade and globalization that the elites presented as a positive thing.

Under stable and incremental conditions, a free-market economy spurs entrepreneurship, ensures efficiency, and generates wealth. Those conditions no longer apply.

'Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

Let's take Taylor Swift. She lives in a huge beautiful apartment; she gets limo-ed everywhere. She's not seeing what it means to live in New York.

Rising inequality is not a law of nature - it's not even a law of economics. It is a consequence of political and economic arrangements, and those arrangements can be changed.

The concentration of U.S. income and wealth in the hands of the very rich is a new development in my lifetime.

The income distribution system constructed in the 20th century has broken down, and it will not come back.

The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.

I can't say, maybe it's something in the ingredients, but again, we have a couple of contestants from Long Island and a phenomenal array of chefs.

Contrary to Piketty’s rentier hypothesis, I don’t see anyone on the [Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans] whose ancestors bought a great parcel of land in 1780 and have been accumulating family wealth by collecting rents ever since. In America, that old money is long gone - through instability, inflation, taxes, philanthropy, and spending.

Can we drop the pretense of Presidents Day and just call it I needed a long weekend because Valentines Day is garbage

If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.

Long Island for me, it's producing more chefs coming out of there than Paris.

President Bush listed his income as $822,000. You know what John Kerry calls someone who earns $822,000? Not even worth dating.

For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have bore the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.

This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.

It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime.