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"Poverty abolitionists do the difficult thing. They donate to worthy organizations, yes, but they must do more. If charity were enough, well, it would be enough, and this book would be irrelevant. Giving money away is a beautiful act, and yet poverty persists. Rather than throwing money over the wall, let’s tear the wall down."

"We are connected, members of a shared nation and a shared economy, where the advantages of the rich often come at the expense of the poor. But that arrangement is not inevitable or permanent. It was made by human hands and can be unmade by them." ... "Increasingly, American consumers are considering the environmental impact of their purchases. We should consider their poverty impact, too."

"In principle, the power vacuums that software designs leave open could allow for diversity and healthy self-governance. But as feminist activist and scholar Jo Freeman famously observed, a “tyranny of structurelessness” frequently arises—one in which the absence of an explicit hierarchy in a system results in an hidden, difficult-to-alter hierarchy imported from external social forces."

"As early as the eighteenth century, the Tsars stopped kicking their enemies out of the country, opting instead to send them to Siberia. Why? Because they had determined that to exile a man from Russia as God has exiled Adam from Eden was insufficient as a punishment; for in another country, a man might immerse himself in his labors, build a house, raise a family. That is, he might begin his life anew."

"I am not calling for "redistribution". I'm calling for the rich to pay their taxes. I'm calling for a rebalancing of our social safety net. I'm calling for a return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare. I'm calling for more poor aid and less rich aid."

"One might well draw the conclusion, that a man prone to pacing is a man who will act judiciously -- given the unusual amount of time he has allocated to the consideration of causes and consequences, of ramifications and repercussions. But it had been the Count's experience that men prone to pace are always on the verge of acting impulsively. For while the men who pace are being whipped along be logic, it is a multifaceted sort of logic, which brings them no closer to a clear understanding, or even a state of conviction."

"What good is financial literacy training for people forced to choose the best bad option? Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that."

"Consumers benefit from worker exploration, too. We can now, with a few clicks, summon Rides and groceries and Chinese takeout and a handyman, all at cut rates. We have become matters in this new servant economy, where an anonymized and unpaid workforce does the bidding of the affluent."

"The American poor, living as they do in the epicenter of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods... But what good is a toaster oven if you can't afford the electricity to power it or the kitchen in which to use it?"

”... the existence of our wine list runs counter to the ideals of the Revolution. That it is a monument to the privilege of the nobility, the effeteness of the intelligentsia, and the predatory pricing of speculators... A meeting was held, a vote was taken, an order was handed down... Henceforth, the Boyarsky shall sell only red and white wine with every bottle at a single price."

"It's almost impossible to look away, or not feel that special kind of guilty excitement in the worst, most greedy and indecent parts of yourself. This is why (...) the cruelest forms of reality TV and tabloid news and talk radio generate such numbers. But that doesn't mean the fascination is good, or even feels good. Aren't there parts of ourselves that are just better left unfed?"