22 Quotes by David K. Shipler

Time magazine found in a 2000 survey that 19 percent of Americans thought they were in the top 1 percent of wage-earners, and another 20 percent expected to be in the future. “So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top i percent, he was taking a direct shot at them,” wrote David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.3.

A key test for any society is whether or not it is self-correcting. And to be self-correcting, it must first be open and truthful about itself.

Wo rkers at the edge of poverty are essential to America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed.

On their way to jail, to deportation from the country, or to expulsion from school, those who confront the muscle of the state frequently see their rights bruised, their liberties wounded. This book is about some of those people. Therefore, it is about all of us.