Tavis Smiley Quotes

No society is healthy when the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

Increasingly, we're seeing two worlds in Canada. The world for most Canadians is increasingly unaffordable, involves more precarious work, and is a harder place in which to get by. The second world is an exclusive club for the wealthy and well-connected who get special access and are exempt from rules the rest of us play by.

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

What I worry about is the lack of understanding in society around the world that there is a divide in the world between those who have and those who do not.

We live in a very unequal society.

I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.

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.

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

The messenger matters. When people of modest means complain about inequality, it usually gets written off as class warfare, but when billionaires complain, the problem is redefined.

Social inequality … divides society into two classes -- the wage-slaves and the grabbers of capital

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

There are only two families in the whole world, my old grandmother used to say, The Haves and the Have-Nots.

There are but two families in the world … The haves and the have-nots.

one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

To be concerned about inequality is not engaging in class warfare.

I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the travails of the middle class.

The United States is the richest and also the most unequal country in the world.

Obama's economic policies widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

Inequality is on the rise in Canada and those at the top have no idea what life is like for most Canadian families.

One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't was a lot of time thinking about the people who build their pyramids, either.

That divide between the rich and poor is so crazy, because even white kids are suffering now.