Zoe Saldana Quotes

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.

Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

Income inequality is one thing, but a permanent division into the haves and have-nots is an entirely different thing - and much less acceptable.

Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes - one rich, one poor - both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?

Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings.

The trajectory of this country [USA] is not positive and particularly for the disadvantaged, as we see what's happening. The gains in productivity have dropped, the gains in income for the middle class and the least advantaged have slowed, at best.

The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.

America has tolerated inequality because people think they can get ahead. If you have immobility on top of inequality, then people are not going to be happy campers. If you're stuck on the bottom and there just isn't much churning in society and you're stuck there through your adulthood, that's not a nice life to look forward to.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

I watched the Republican debate. At one point, the candidates said there are no classes in America, a point then hotly debated by all six rich white guys that were there.

I do not think an enormous permanent underclass is a very good thing to have if you're attempting to operate something that at least pretends sometimes to be a democracy.

There's no such thing as median income; there's a curve, and it really matters what side of the curve you're on. There's no such thing as the middle class. It's absolutely vanishing.

Growing up on, say, the Upper East Side, you're so isolated. If you go to the Hamptons every weekend, you never talk to a construction worker, and the construction worker would never talk to you.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups.

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

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.

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

Segregation by race has declined gradually since 1970, but separation by income has grown steadily in the same period.

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.

It is the unvarying law that the wealth of the community will be in the hands of the few ...

It's not an underclass anymore; it's an outer class.