George Packer Quotes

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.

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

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.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

Inequality is on the rise.

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.

Los Angeles cannot permanently exist as two cities—one amazingly prosperous, the other increasingly poorer in substance and in hope.... This city, like the nation, is living with an increasing polarization of incomes. A rising tide no longer lifts all boats.

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

Poverty divide not only nations but societies within nations.

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.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

As income inequality increases, social mobility falls.

The Great Gatsby Curve

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

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

Rising inequality has changed family dynamics for all socioeconomic groups.

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.

When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist.

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

The rise of Donald Trump has exposed a deep chasm in America between the haves and have-nots.

What's interesting is that you've got a lot of overlap between supporters of different parties and different candidates who feel regardless of who's been in power, the rich have got richer and half the country's got poorer.

If you don't have money or you come from a background that doesn't have money, it's harder to achieve your ambition in life. It's not that you can't, but it becomes harder. Inequality is one of the worst things that can exist in our society, so I am interested in those kind of things.