Richest Affluent Quotes

We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent — at least when it comes to housing — we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians' canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

I was recently on a plane from Raleigh to Boston when I overheard a conversation between two women in the seats behind me that captured the national mood perfectly. An older woman with a Boston accent remarked, “It’s gone to shit. Everything’s gone to shit. The economy is terrible. Crime is crazy—I mean, I just go to work and come home and I don’t even go out.” The younger woman, who had a Southern accent, sighed knowingly. “It makes you wonder if you want to bring a child into this world,” she said. These were women who could afford airplane tickets. They were traveling between two affluent cities during a period of historically low crime rates in the richest nation during the wealthiest period of the history of the world. Clearly, it didn’t feel that way.

From the earliest years we have been conditioned to believe that a benign fate would provide for us. After all, everybody seemed to agree that we had the great fortune of living in the richest country that ever was, in the most scientifically advanced period of human history, surrounded by the most efficient technology, protected by the wisest Constitution. Therefore, it made sense to expect that we would have a richer, more meaningful life than any earlier members of the human race. If our grandparents, living in that ridiculously primitive past, could be content, just imagine how happy we would be! Scientists told us this was so, it was preached from the pulpits of churches, and it was confirmed by thousands of TV commercials celebrating the good life. Yet despite all these assurances, sooner or later we wake up alone, sensing that there is no way this affluent, scientific, and sophisticated world is going to provide us with happiness.

At Yale, a top choice of IvyWise students, the median household income of parents was nearly $193,000 with 69 percent of the student body hailing from the country’s richest 20 percent of households. Students in the least affluent 20 percent of households account for just 2.1 percent of Yale’s class. To put it another way, a child born into the one percent is 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than a child born into the bottom fifth of American households.

you were a member of the American upper middle class in the 1970s, you weren’t just enjoying a more affluent life, you had a longer one, too. Those in the top half of the economy were living an average of 1.2 more years than those in the bottom half. By the early 2000s, the difference had increased dramatically. Those in the upper half of the income spectrum could expect nearly six additional years of life, and by 2018, the divide had widened, with the richest 10 percent of Americans living thirteen more years of life than the poorest 10 percent.40

Wealth will be a buffer for some countries, but not a safeguard, as Australia is learning already: by far the richest of all the countries staring down the most intense, most immediate warming barrages, it is an early test case of how the world’s affluent societies will bend, or buckle, or rebuild under the pressure of temperature changes likely to hit the rest of the well-off world only later this century.

He oversaw a series of critical articles under the rubric “The Poor Taste of the Rich.” The intent of the series was to assure readers “That Wealth Is Not Essential to the Decoration of a House,” and to enlighten them to the fact “That the Homes of Many of Our Richest Citizens Are Furnished in Execrable Taste.” The critical articles came amply illustrated with photographs of the offending mansions, and the names of the affluent residents were not withheld. The series generated considerable publicity but, interestingly, no lawsuits.

We have the money. We've just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent - at least when it comes to housing - we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians' canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes.59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources. —