Pius XI Quotes

If one man in the country could take all the money, what was the use of passing any bills about it?

The economy may be complex, but Americans understand that the Wall Street banks control an outsized portion of the economy and that they have an outsized interest in their own profits.

By definition, design, and practice, capitalism is a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.

It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to . . . American democracy.

When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal.

Crony capitalism is alive and well: the big are bigger, the wealthy are getting wealthier because, with a very large powerful complicated government, which is what we have and which Democrats want more of, only the big, the powerful, the wealthy and the well connected can survive.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

Well, capitalism is going to grow and grow. The nature of it is that the guy who has the most poker chips on the table has more leverage than everyone else. He can eventually outbluff everyone else and outraise everyone else at the table. That's what has happened and it needs to be corrected.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.

Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.

The Negro today perhaps has more political power than ever before and he is worse off than ever before. It is not votes but dollars that count in this civilization.

In a capitalist society all institutions are in danger of control by the counting room.

So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about 10 men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. They either own directly everything or they have got some kind of mortgage on it, with a very small percentage to be excepted. They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other

The United States economy is like a poker game where the chips have become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and where the other fellows can stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit runs out the game will stop.

I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

The annual 'Forbes' Billionaires List speaks volumes about the movement and concentration of wealth across industries and geographies.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few threatens the ability of ordinary people to raise their voices and have a say over how our societies are run.

Corporations and financiers have used their growing influence to induce governments and international organizations to construct a global framework of institutions and regulations that enable elites to maximize their rental income.

The invectives against capital in the hands of those who have it are double-faced, and when turned about are nothing but demands for capital in the hands of those who have it not, in order that they may do with it just what those who have it now are doing with it.

The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.

Riches are the savings of many in the hands of one.

Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?