Patrick Sharkey Quotes

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.

Integration in the fields of education, housing, transportation and public accommodations will be of limited extent and duration so long as fundamental economic inequality along racial lines persist.

A lot of the things that we think of as being racial differences are really class differences in America.

That divide between the rich and poor is so crazy, because even white kids are suffering now.

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation.

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

The central issue of our time remains the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.

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.

We are still a nation deeply divided by race and class.

As income inequality increases, social mobility falls.

Inequality is now determined more about where you live than the class you belong to.

That certain groups do much better in America than others—as measured by income, occupational status, test scores and so on – is difficult to talk about.

No society is healthy when the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

I grew up in an area that was the typical city that was a racially divided and economically segregated place. And it had a big influence on me.

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children.

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

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.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.

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.

This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process.