Cornel West Quotes

There’s just too much money in the hands of too few.

By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then.

Today, half of the national income goes to the richest 10 percent. In 2007, the top 1 percent controlled 34.6 percent of the wealth—significantly more than the bottom 90 percent who control just 26.9 percent.

We live in a country where a small number of people have incredible wealth and power. America has more income and wealth inequality than any other major country.

They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality.

In 1985, the top five percent of the households - the wealthiest five percent - had net worth of $8 trillion - which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.

The world is richer than ever, and the gaps between rich and poor are wider.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

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

Welfare for the wealthy simply can no longer be afforded.

No matter how we name and dissect inequality, we must keep explaining the larger downside of such concentrated extreme wealth.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

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.

Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.

A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.

They talk about class warfare -- the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country. And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

1% of the population has all the money and the other 99% have nothing.

We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us: this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I?

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

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.

In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor.

The rich are richer, and the poor are poorer, in the city than elsewhere; and, as a rule, the greater are the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor.

No one should have more than five times the wealth of the poorest person.

Income inequality is not a bad thing. Income inequality is a good thing.