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The rise of capitalism, rather than delivering improvements in human welfare, was associated with plummeting wages, a reduction in human stature, and a marked upturn in the incidence of famine. Progress did not begin until the 1880s in the European core, and the 20th century in the European periphery, the latter roughly a century later than the standard narrative suggests.

— Jason Hickel

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Poverty

More quotes by Jason Hickel

The colonial high-water mark was an effect of capitalist policy and should never have existed.

If the whole population were to consume and emit like Ireland and Switzerland, we would be living on a dead planet right now.

More than 40 years of experimentation with neoliberalism shows that it erodes the power of voters to decide the rules that govern the economic systems they inhabit.

The Handbook of Neoliberalism (2016)

To get a sense of how extreme overconsumption is: if we all were to live like the average citizen of the average high-income country, we would require the ecological capacity equivalent of 3.4 earths.

The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (2018)

GDP was intended to be a war-time measure, which is why it is so single-minded – almost even violent. It tallies up all money-based activity, but it doesn't care whether that activity is useful or destructive.

The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (2018)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jason Hickel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.