What they’re saying about the poverty gap

POLLY TOYNBEE, columnist for the Guardian
"You should see some of the contemptuous things said and written about us now across the rest of Europe - and it's not the politics of envy, but distaste for London's excess side by side with London's poverty." (Guardian, September 11 2007)

JOHN PLENDER, senior editorial writer for the Financial Times
"There is anger about a system that permits bankers to earn huge bonuses when finance booms, while taxpayers pick up the bill when banks fail. Business once again has a legitimacy problem, as it did when public trust was forfeited after the Enron collapse. The implicit compact between business and politics is breaking down." (Financial Times, April 7 2008)

WILL HUTTON, author and former editor of the Observer
"There has not been a gap between the rich and poor on the current scale ever in history. It is unstable. Sooner or later, there will be popular outrage and a political response. For the moment, though, it seems that a spell has been cast over the political process, at least in Britain." (Observer, May 4 2008)

ALAN GREENSPAN, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve
"The whole issue of what has happened with respect to the increasing inequality of incomes I abhor. What is causing it to a very significant extent is the fact that skilled labour is under extraordinary demand as the technologies increase. We are not putting the proper number of people into the education cycle to get them up to skill levels. This would create a good deal less in the way of income inequality. (In a debate with Naomi Klein, September 27 2007)

Naomi Klein, award-winning anti-globalisation writer and columnist
"The real legacy of neoliberalism is the story of the income gap. It destroyed the tools that narrowed the gap between rich and poor. The very people (such as Jeffrey Sachs) who opened up this violent divide might now be saying that we have to do something for the people at the very bottom, but they still have nothing to say for the people in the middle who've lost everything." (Interview in Red Pepper magazine, November 2007)

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer
"We have created in the United States, largely in the last 30 years, a whole series of programs - a few of them explicit, many of them deeply hidden - that take money from the pockets of the poor and the middle-class and upper middle-class and funnel it to the wealthiest people in America." (Democracy Now! Radio interview, January 18 2008)

WARREN BUFFET, investment guru and philanthropist
"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. In a country that prides itself on equality of opportunity, it's becoming anything but that." (November 14 2007)

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee 2008
"(We must) address the emerging structural imbalance in our economy - partly due to globalisation, partly due to technology and automation - where increasingly the benefits of economic growth were accruing to a smaller band of people." (February 2 2008)

BILL GROSS, managing director of Pimco (world's biggest bond fund)
"When the fruits of society's labour become maldistributed, when the rich get richer and the middle- and lower-classes struggle to keep their heads above water as is clearly the case today, then the system ultimately breaks down; boats do not rise equally with the tide; the centre cannot hold." (October 8 2007)

ROBERT ZOELLICK, President of World Bank
"While many in the US and Europe worry about filling their [vehicle] tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it is getting more and more difficult everyday." (April 2008)

FIRST POSTED JUNE 3, 2008