W.E.B. Du Bois

Work is service, not gain. The object of work is life, not income. The reward of production is plenty, not private fortune. We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

Noam Chomsky

The world is a very mysterious and confusing place. If you are not willing to get confused, you become a replica of someone else’s mind.

Noam Chomsky

There is no such thing as a poor country. There’s only one failed system in resource management.

Friedrich Engels

The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but makes a bargain with the poor, saying: ‘If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery.’

Lyndon B. Johnson

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

It all makes sense now! Racism is the root cause of this.
byu/sawg_johnny23 inthe_everything_bubble

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.

Hamilton Nolan - Everyone Into The Grinder

Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.

Sylvia Pankhurst

I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving.

Happy International Women's Day!✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/2lUB6wSEhW

— Enemy of the State 🏴 (@egceots) March 9, 2024

Albert Einstein

Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Will Rogers

Ten men in our country could buy the World, and ten million can't buy enough to eat.

And income inequality in America has only gotten worse in the past 92 years

Harry Truman (1952)

Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people.

Voltaire

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

A Hacker News comment on Entrepreneurs by notacoward

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

i have thought about this hacker news comment nearly every day since november ninth twenty seventeen pic.twitter.com/mz5auDBkKl

— josh ackerman (@joshuaackerman) June 7, 2022

John Stuart Mill

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.

Martin Luther King, Jr

The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

You first.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions—that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree.
Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chat - June 24, 1938

Franklin D. Roosevelt

…no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. …and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act June 16, 1933

Hesiod

They only care about frivolous things. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly ... impatient of restraint.