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One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don't like to think of themselves as poor.

You see, without hard work and responsibility, there is no American Dream. Hard work lays the foundation. Our solidarity makes work pay - for all of us. For the greater good. That's what our vision of shared prosperity is all about.

There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

People who work full-time in America should not have to live in poverty - simple as that. Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead. Too many people are finding the rungs on the ladder of opportunity further and further apart.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

The promise of America has always been that if you worked hard, had the right values, took some risks, that there was an opportunity to build a better life for your family and for your next generation.

I'm not interested in building wealth, which is kind of naive and probably frowned on, living in America. It's something that people don't necessarily understand, but if I die poor, I die poor.

Our family's fortune is growing faster than ever. We're a part of a small number of American families that own most of the country's wealth. But having so much in the hands of so few can't be good for America.

And if you look at the reality in the United States, where you have more than 40 million people below the poverty line and 42 million on food stamps, and then you look at poverty around the world, clearly the way we're running the engine of capitalism is not serving us well.

All the wealthiest people in the U.S. seem compelled to brag about how humble they are.