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Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

Economist

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Famous Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

“In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living standards of more of its citizens than in other countries....The much higher crime rate than in Europe or Japan -- in per capita terms, the US has eight times more people in prison than Europe and twelve times more than Japan -- shows that there is a far bigger underclass in the US.”

Inequality
Book:23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
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“The issue of false consciousness is a genuinely difficult problem that has no definite solution. We should not approve of an unequal and brutal society because surveys show that people are happy. But who has the right to tell those oppressed women or starving landless peasants that they shouldn’t be happy, if they think they are? Does anyone have the right to make those people feel miserable by telling them the ‘truth’? There are no easy answers to these questions, but they definitely tell us that we cannot rely on ‘subjective’ happiness surveys to decide how well people are doing.”

HappinessEconomySocietyEconomicsInequalityFalse Consciousness
Book:Economics: The User's Guide
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“As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith’s basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels. For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith’s scheme. But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in the use of given technology. Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image building and advertising.”

CapitalismCompetitionProfitAdvertisingPropagandaPublic RelationsAdam SmithEcomics
Book:Economics: The User's Guide
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“Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.”

ScienceCapitalismEconomicsBoundariesRegulationFree Markets
Book:23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
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“The focus on the market has made most economists neglect vast areas of our economic life, with significant negative consequences for our well-being. The neglect of production at the expense of exchange has made policy-makers in some countries overly complacent about the decline of their manufacturing industries. The view of individuals as consumers, rather than producers, has led to the neglect of issues such as the quality of work (e.g., how interesting it is, how safe it is, how stressful it is and even how oppressive it is) and work-life balance. The disregard of these aspects of economic life partly explains why most people in the rich countries don’t feel more fulfilled despite consuming the greatest ever quantities of material goods and services. The economy is much bigger than the market. We will not be able to build a good economy — or a good society — unless we look at the vast expanse beyond the market.”

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Book:Economics: The User's Guide
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“The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract.”

PeoplePoliticalSocialEconomyDemocracyDangerKillingPushingContractsThreateningPolitical SystemsLivelihoodSpiralsLegitimacyRewritingUnderminingAusteritySocial ContractDownward SpiralBackdoor
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries.”

PeopleWorldHas BeensCountryRichWrittenInvolvedStandardsCapitalismTradeHistoricalDevelopingPerceiveFree MarketFree TradeDouble StandardDeveloping Countries
Book:Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
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“It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries.”

IfsWantNeedsGivingCountryChanceTechnologyProductsIndustryPeriodsGiving UpPaidCompetitionInternationalProtectionProducersTake TimeCheaperNew TechnologyImportsIt Takes Time
Book:Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity
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“Rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.”

WantCountryPastUsedPoorRichPolicyTradeCompetitorsFree MarketLaddersEmergingFree TradePoor CountriesRich CountriesNationalistic
Book:Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity
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“As South Korea shows, active participation in international trade does not require free trade. Indeed, had South Korea pursued free trade and not promoted infant industries, it would not have become a major trading nation. It would still be exporting raw materials (e.g., tungsten ore, fish, seaweed) or low-technology, low-price products (e.g., textiles, garments, wigs made with human hair) that used to be its main export items in the 1960s.”

HumansDoeMadeStillsShowsUsedNationsTechnologyMaterialsProductsHairIndustryMajorsLowsTradeSouthInternationalFishesActiveUsed To BeParticipationTradingInfantItems1960sKoreaPursuedGarmentsRaw MaterialsFree TradeWigsSeaweedSouth KoreaTextilesInternational TradeExportingActive Participation
Book:Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
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“All the alleged key causes of SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] inefficiency - the principal-agent problem, the free-rider problem and the soft budget constraint - are, while real, not unique to state-owned enterprises. Large private-sector firms with dispersed ownership also suffer from the principal-agent problem and the free-rider problem. So, in these two areas, forms of ownership do matter, but the critical divide is not between state and private ownership - it is between concentrated and dispersed ownerships.”

TwoRealMatterStatesProblemFormSufferingCausesKeysUniqueAreasCriticalAgentsBudgetsFirmEnterpriseDividesOwnershipPrincipalConstraintsRidersPrivate SectorInefficiency
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“The days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage.”

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Book:Bad Samaritans: rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world
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“Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.”

CountryBitsPoorRichEconomicPolicyScalesSocialismEnterpriseGoreEconomic SystemsFree EnterpriseAmerican WriterRich CountriesMacroeconomicsKeynesianism
Book:Bad Samaritans: rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world
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“The widely accepted assertion that, only if you let markets be will everyone be paid correctly and thus fairly, according to his worth, is a myth. Only when we part with this myth and grasp the political nature of the market and the collective nature of individual productivity will we be able to build a more just society in which historical legacies and collective actions, and not just individual talents and efforts, are properly taken into account in deciding how to reward people.”

PeopleIfsAbleActionPoliticalIndividualEffortTakenTalentAccountsPaidHistoricalRewardsMythProductivityAcceptedLegacyCollectivesAssertionCollective ActionIndividual Talent
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays.”

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Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“Between the Great Depression and the 1970s, private business was viewed with suspicion even in most capitalist economies. Businesses were, so the story goes, seen as anti-social agents whose profit-seeking needed to be restrained for other, supposedly loftier, goals, such as justice, social harmony, protection of the weak and even national glory.”

StoriesSocialGoalJusticeEconomyNeededGloryWeakHarmonyProfitSeekingProtectionAgentsCapitalistSuspicionGreat DepressionAnti SocialCapitalist EconomySocial Harmony
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“Equality of opportunity is not enough. Unless we create an environment where everyone is guaranteed some minimum capabilities through some guarantee of minimum income, education, and healthcare, we cannot say that we have fair competition. When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society.”

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Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“The higher education system in these countries (US, Korea etc) has become like a theatre in which some people decided to stand to get a better view, promoting the others behind them to stand. Once enough people stand, everyone has to stand, which means no one is getting a better view, while everyone has become more uncomfortable.”

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Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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