I want to make sure everybody who has a job wants a job.
Severe poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.
I think one big improvement would be if we somehow made it cheaper and easier for developing countries to learn from the sad experience of some of the developed countries, and also from some of the positive experiences we have of building good transportation systems, like high-speed rail.
You may know that in India now the Tata car is becoming all the rage; you can buy it for one lakh - $2000 dollars - it's very, very cheap. So India seems to be going the route that China went a few years ago and that developing countries all over the world seem to want to follow, namely, to rely on these personal vehicles, which is just an irrational way of organizing transport.
We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.
It is perfectly consistent - and also true - to say that the world poverty problem today is smaller (relative to world population) than before and yet also a much graver injustice.
A few hundred years ago, perhaps 85 or even 90 percent of humanity lived below a standard of living that today only 40 or 45 percent fail to reach. But at that earlier time only part of this poverty could have been eradicated, and this at substantial cost not only to the pleasures of the affluent, but also to their well-being and to human culture. In our time, nearly all severe poverty could be eradicated at a cost to the affluent that is truly trivial.
The filmmaker Amos Poe was a huge inspiration for me by making guerrilla-style punk films on the streets of New York and - well, it's just a lot of painters and artists and filmmakers all within that scene, and it's very, very important to me.
He is rich enough who does not want bread.
Tonight, late, when I'm still not done with the day but must comply with sleep, I can whisper, "There was done a little good today. Today I changed myself and the world, just a little. And yes, I loved. " Most days, that is enough.
My father loved me so much that he did not want me to be a laborer or anything. I dont know if its the right thing to do - push your kids into something and then stay on them until they do it. Let them pick what they want to do.