Anthea Turner Quotes

Those who work ought to live better than those that don't.

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.

Millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it's time we just ask.

The big lie is that the people who make a lot of money were the only ones that worked hard.

I don't like indecent, unearned wealth. But it is legitimate for an entrepreneur who has created something to make a good living.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

I understand that people might be poor if they don't have any work, but I don't accept that someone is poor if they've worked really hard.

So as a nation, we have a right to be very proud of the successes that we have seen because of the struggle of millions of people to create a less discriminatory society. That is something we should be proud of, but there is one struggle in which not only have we not succeeded but in which we are losing ground and that is the fundamental struggle for economic justice.

It's immoral and wrong that the top 1 percent of the USA owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. We should look at countries like Denmark and Sweden and Norway and look at what they've accomplished for their working people.

Public policy today is favoring the rich, not the poor. It's not addressing the needs of the poor.

When people ask, "Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?" - my answer is not an answer most people get: It's because their power developed from laws that enriched them.

How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?

In this, of all the countries in the world, possession of inordinate wealth by individuals should be held as a crime against Indian humanity.

Once you open that door to a values conversation, it's going to undercut a right-wing economic agenda, which values wealth over work and favors the rich over the poor, or resorts to war as the first resort and not the last.

I want us to raise the national minimum wage, because people who live in poverty should not - who work full-time should not still be in poverty.

What democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent - almost - own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States.

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.

I think the gap between rich and poor is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and needs the immediate attention of the state.

There is no such thing as equality, other than of opportunity and before the law. But there is no equality of what's gonna happen to you when you engage or pursue your opportunity, and there's no guarantee that's what's gonna happen to you once you have your equality before the law. There is no equality of outcome.

Christians, you and your churches don't get to be millionaires while other people have nothing at all. They're your bloody rules! Either stick to them or abandon the faith.

There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation and inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody's well-being. That trickle-down hasn't happened. We've seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.

I agree with people who say we want more income equality; we want more consumer protection; and we want sounder banks. I agree with all that.

The distribution of wealth is not determined by nature. It is determined by policy.

The American people understand that it is grotesquely unfair - we are a society that prides itself on fairness, that prides itself on equal opportunity, and people are looking out and seeing, since the Great Recession of 2008, 99 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?