Economic Imbalance Quotes

As a community we have been living beyond our means…. We have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amounts of goods and services we are producing.

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.

It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of "an abundance or surplus" arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.

A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to invade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.

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

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

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population…. we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment …

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people.

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.

The euro has become a means by which superior German productivity is able to gain an absolutely unbeatable advantage over the whole eurozone territory.

Much money makes a Countrey poor, for it sets a dearer price on every thing.

To try to correct imbalances with trade restrictions is a grave error.

It's almost as if we have two lobes in our brain. There's the consumer and investor mode, and we're doing better and better at that lobe. But at the producer and seller mode, we have to work harder and harder. And the better we do as consumers and investors - the easier it is for us to choose something better, to exit every commercial relationship - the harder we have to work as sellers and producers. One follows from the other.

Germany had the misfortune of becoming poisoned, first because of plenty, and then because of want.

We know that a peaceful world cannot long exist, one-third rich and two-thirds hungry.

U.S. capital formation, which has been pretty high in the '90s and very high in the late 1990s, is what is being financed by the savings of the rest of the world, generally poorer than ourselves, because our deficit on current account, chronic deficit, is their surplus, and they have been willingly bringing that to the American market.

At the center of every recession is a serious imbalance in the economy and mirrored in the financial system. Think subprime mortgage and the Great Recession, or the technology bubble and the early 2000s recession. There are no such imbalances today.

Marriage to a very rich woman posed problems.

Here's what income and wealth inequality is about. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made more than 24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers. This level of inequality is neither moral or sustainable

Steak on the plate went up. Steak on the hoof went down.

We started out covering income inequality in the magazine [Mother Jones], but that ongoing body of work positioned - and sourced - us well to put both Occupy and the 47 percent in context.

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?

There will be a debate on Firing Line between Buckley and Gore Vidal on the proposition: "This nation cannot survive as long as the income of 50 percent of the population is below the median." Mr. Vidal will take the affirmative.

Unfettered markets eventually get out of whack.

The consumer is the only man in our economy without a high-powered lobbyist in Washington.