Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.
Abrams originated this famous phrase which many have been used subsequently for various “socialized” government benefits that were available to the rich but not the poor. He was referring to the fact that at the time, the government provided housing assistance to the rich by having federally insured mortgages and granting tax deductions for the interest in home mortgages, but there was no assistance to the poor who could only afford to rent and had no tax deductions nor was there any federal public housing assistance. During the Great Recession the phrase was often used when the government gave bail out money to General Motors and the largest banks who were close to bankruptcy, but the landscaping gardener or the hot dog vendor whose business was falling because of the recession were told that is the capitalist system—there are some winners and some losers. The government officials who advocated the bailout did not disagree about the fairness and appropriateness of the Abrams phrase but if they had not bailed the banks out, the entire economic system of the country would probably have collapsed and the ensuing depression would hurt the average worker and the poor even more. Related to the recent “too big to fail” concept.
Over the years, despite many efforts to unify workers of the world, most were much more focused on their own country. In this sense, Mussolini who was so wrong about most political things, may have been right in this instance.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of early civil rights activist Martin Luther King Sr.
