“The world economy is pumping trillions of dollars into the accounts of a few thousand people. These riches should be directed first and foremost to end the millions of needless deaths caused by extreme poverty, and to educate the hundreds of millions of children who lack schooling. The billionaires would still have enough left over to indulge their longing for mega-yachts, personal space ships, private tropical islands, and other conspicuous consumption.”

— Jeffrey D. Sachs

"Billionaires reach for the stars while world suffers, CNN, August 15th, 2018 http://jeffsachs.org/2018/08/billionaires-reach-for-the-stars-while-world-suffers/

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The world economy is pumping trillions of dollars into the accounts of a few thousand people. These riches should be di…" by Jeffrey D. Sachs?

Jeffrey D. Sachs 29

American economist 1954

Related quotes

“The fission bomb was a costly mistress. Consider, your Honors. In 1979 this planet celebrated the International Year of the Child. Of the one hundred and twenty-two million children born that year, one of every ten was dead by 1982, and most died for lack of inexpensive food and vaccines. Yet in 1982 the world spent one trillion dollars on weapons. One trillion dollars!”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 12, “In Which It Is Shown that the End of the World Was More Necessary than Previously Supposed” (pp. 156-157)

“It is not part of the functions of the national government to find employment for people — and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for this purpose, we should be taxing forty millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

To B. A. Hinsdale in 1874, as quoted in The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield: 1831-1877 (1925) by Theodore Clarke Smith, p. 517
1870s

“There are millions and millions of people who are tired of establishment politics, who are tired of corporate greed, who want a candidate that will help lead a mass movement in this country. … What people are saying is, "Enough is enough. The billionaire class cannot have it all."”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Interview with Katie Couric, (2 June 2015) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpgJYNaIeqo at 8:00
2010s, 2015

“The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

What Does the Working Man Want? (speech), Louisville, KY (May 1890)

“A reduction of meat consumption by only 10% would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year- about 60 million people!”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

“You have given the great honour … to hundreds of millions of children in the world who are deprived of their childhood and health and education, and fundamental right to freedom. It is a great moment for all those children.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Interview with Nobel Media (2014)
Context: You have given the great honour … to hundreds of millions of children in the world who are deprived of their childhood and health and education, and fundamental right to freedom. It is a great moment for all those children. … I am quite hopeful and rather sure that this will help in giving bigger visibility and attention to the cause of children who are most neglected and most deprived. This will also inspire individuals, activists, governments, business houses, corporate to work hand in hand to fight this out. And I am quite hopeful about it, that the recognition of this issue will help in mobilising bigger support for the cause.

“Millions of people throughout the world are striving to put an end to poverty.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: Millions of people throughout the world are striving to put an end to poverty. They despise oppression, dogmatism, and demagogy (and their more extreme manifestations — racism, fascism, Stalinism, and Maoism). They believe in progress based on the use, under conditions of social justice and intellectual freedom, of all the positive experience accumulated by mankind.

“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Interview in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)
1990s

“The general at the radar screen
he should have got the sack
But that wouldn't bring
Three thousand million, seven hundred, and sixty-eight people back,
Would it?”

Roger McGough (1937) British writer and poet

"Icarus Allsorts", from The Mersey Sound (1967)

“The real evil, the fundamental cause of all the problems of the world today — the fact that two-thirds of the world live in absolute poverty, on less than a dollar a day, while others have not even that, and are dying in the millions — the root of all of that is our complacency.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

If we were not complacent we could not bear to live in a world in which these events were happening, these people were dying in the midst of plenty. We would not allow it to happen if we were not complacent. This is something which we need to remember... because this is the root of all the troubles in the world. It is a sign of our separateness. Complacency results from separation — the sense that we are separate and that by competition we become superior — and that superiority allows us to live what we call ‘well’. But we cannot live ‘well’ when two-thirds of the world are living and dying in absolute poverty. It is not possible to do so with impunity, and we do not. The result is crime. The result is catastrophe of one kind or another — governments which create wars for oil, for example. That is a catastrophe, and it is only possible because we are complacent, because we do not acknowledge the needs of millions of people who cannot take for granted what we take for granted: regular food, leisure, education and healthcare.
The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jeffrey D. Sachs 29

Related quotes

Related topics