Quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

“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. B...”

“Economics is a political argument. It is not and can never be a science; there are no objective truths in economics that can be established independently of political, and frequently moral, judge...”

“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 quali...”

“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 e...”

“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-...”

“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...”

“I would go one step further and say that the willingness to challenge professional economists - and other experts - should be the foundation of democracy. When you think about it, if all we have to...”

“If the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in economics textbooks, it would grind to a halt because we would be spending most of our time cheating, trying to catch the cheaters, a...”

“As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smiths basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels.F...”

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make ...”

“Since the 1980s, we have given the rich a bigger slice of our pie in the belief that they would create more wealth, making the pie bigger than otherwise possible in the long run. The rich got the b...”

“95% of economics is common sense”

“People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.”

“The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history.”

“Charities are now working to give people in poor countries access to the Internet. But shouldn't we spend that money on providing health clinics and safe water? Aren't these things more relevant? I...”

“Economics should be defined in terms of what it is about. It should be about how people produce things, how people exchange them, how people earn income, how they pay taxes, how the government prov...”

“A lot of things that we cannot buy and sell in markets used to be totally legal objects of market exchange - human beings when we had slavery, child labour, human organs, and so on. So there is no ...”

“By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society.”

“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 quali...”

“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 e...”