Stark inequality, poverty, and unemployment are driving increased social unrest and, consequently, social and economic risk. Environmental deterioration may well intensify social inequality.
Economic inequality is a corrosive force that undermines economic growth, puts a brake on the fight against poverty, and sparks social unrest.
High levels of inequality generate high costs for society, dampening social mobility, undermining the labour market prospects of vulnerable social groups, and creating social unrest.
There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful.
we should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren't as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe ? and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America's working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.
The problem in Peru is not so much poverty - it is inequality. The essence of the discourse in 2005 and 2006 is the same one that we have maintained in 2010 and 2011. My macroeconomic policy is to strengthen and ensure economic growth but with social inclusion.
The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.
Today, we are closer to fulfilling America's promise of economic and social justice because we stand on the shoulders of giants like Dr. King, yet our future progress will depend on how we prepare our next generation of leaders. We must fortify their ladders of opportunity by correcting social injustice, breaking the cycle of poverty in struggling communities, and reinvesting in our schools. Education can unlock a child's potential and remains our strongest weapon against injustice and inequality.
My advice to everybody would be to go out as much as possible and deal with social inequality and environmental degradation because these issues are increasingly prescient.
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.
These economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. And they will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas. Five decades and trillions of dollars after President Johnson waged his War on Poverty, the results of this big-government approach are in.
If our system continues without modification involving environmental and social concern, we will face an economic and social break down.
At the core of conservative social policy about race are old ideas that link racial inequality to non-traditional family formation and its attendant culture of poverty.
We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of 'choice' and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands, and a growing machinery of social and civil death.
Productive and sustainable job creation, along with increased and better-targeted social expenditure, are the only routes to permanently beat the poverty trap and to bring our social indicators on par with developed countries.
Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.
An inequality of property is the root and foundation of innumerable evils; it tends to derision, and to keep asunder the social feelings that should exist among the people of God. It is a principle originated in hell; it is the root of all evils. It is inequality in riches that is a great curse.