Rich-Poor Gap Quotes
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.
For the previous 7 years the economy had grown but almost all the benefits went to the rich producing a dramatic period where the average worker did not even get a raise under the George W. Bush economic and tax policies.
Most people who hear this quote for the first time assume that it originates with some radical socialist of the 1930s. However it came from a President of the United States and a Republican President at that. Few scholars will place this quotation correctly.
See {34743} or {33971} for a more colorful and eloquent statement of the same notion.
