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Quote by Louis Yako

“Death by Starvation or Boredom” Many toil for scraps and cheap wages, surviving one fragile breath at a time— just one more breath... While others, bloated with excess, labor only to escape boredom, pretending they’re saving a world drowning in the greed they created, and the power they refuse to let go. The first walks a tightrope between breath and hunger. The second, cushioned by comfort, drifts closer to spiritual starvation, their soul numbed by excess. And here lies the cruel symmetry— fate, with its blunt hands, levels the field by offering death either way: starvation... or boredom. But the greatest tragedy belongs to those who die of both.”

Quote by Louis Yako

Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

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Louis Yako

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“Taxi Driver” There’s a strange kind of liberation in being just a taxi driver— the freedom tucked inside that word: just. Because you’re just a driver, no one truly sees you. Yet you see it all— the absurdities, the shallows, the beauty, sorrow, joy, heartbreak—passengers unknowingly exposed. They grant you a diluted respect, sometimes half-fake, sometimes not at all— because you’re just a taxi driver. But they leave you be. No one's scheming to steal your seat. They want you in that seat. They ride with you because, for now, it’s a seat they don’t desire. Still, like all fleeting liberations, this too carries disappointment— a bittersweet sting. You realize the only reason they leave you alone is because you've escaped into a seat they never wanted in the first place. And that hurts.”

PovertyPowerWorking ClassHuman BehaviorTaxiClass StruggleInvisibilityArabic PoetryPower DynamicsRidesharing
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“That such Shantytowns exist is a sorrowful reflection upon the state of society. The throwing into jail of men broken by experience and the burning of their wretched places of habitation will not solve the economic problem. Nor is it likely to lead to the solution of the most macabre mystery in Cleveland’s history.”

PovertyClevelandEconomic Disparity
Book:Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology
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“John Norberg of the Cato Institute notes: 'If someone had told you in 1990 that over the next twenty-five years world hunger would decline by 40 per cent, child mortality would halve, and extreme poverty would fall by three quarters, you'd have told them they were a naive fool. But the fools were right. This is truly what has happened.' Having experienced Third World poverty as a child, I know that nothing drags down the human spirit more than a sense of helplessness, uncertainty and fear of the future. A small regular income and access to basic goods like TV sets and refrigerators also improve one's sense of well-being. In short, the eradication of poverty is spiritually uplifting.”

PovertyIncomeThird World CountriesPoverty Alleviation
Book:Has the West Lost It?: A Provocation
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“To occupy the time I talked with a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter who wore a collar and tie, and was on the road, he said, for lack of a set of tools. He kept a little aloof from the other tramps, and held himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary tastes, too, and carried one of Scott’s novels on all his wanderings. He told me he never entered a spike unless driven there by hunger, sleeping under hedges and behind ricks in preference. Along the south coast he had begged by day and slept in bathing-machines for weeks at a time. We talked of life on the road. He criticized the system which makes a tramp spend fourteen hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging the police. He spoke of his own case – six months at the public charge for want of three pounds’ worth of tools. It was idiotic, he said. Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, and what I thought of it. And at that he changed his tune immediately. I saw that I had awakened the pew-renter who sleeps in every English workman. Though he had been famished along with the rest, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather than given to the tramps. He admonished me quite severely. ‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too pleasant you’d have all the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum away. These tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum.’ I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating: ‘You don’t want to have any pity on these tramps – scum, they are. You don’t want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum.’ It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes.”

PovertyHomelessnessWastage
Book:Essays
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“The rich individuals are increasingly hoarding everything. If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems. We now have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don't need more than $1 billion to live comfortably. Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction. We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilized world.”

WealthPovertyWealth InequalityCharitable GivingWealth Distribution99 PercentCharitable Acts
Author:Jeffrey Sachs
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