Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.

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

The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.

There are different ways to organise capitalism. Free-market capitalism is only one of them-and not a very good one at that.

95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.

95 percent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even for the remaining 5 percent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms.

The washing machine changed the world more than the Internet.

The Korean economic miracle was the result of a clever and pragmatic mixture of market incentives and state direction.

[Good managers] know that people have 'good' sides and 'bad' sides and that the secret of good management is in magnifying the former and toning down the latter.

A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.

Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.

There is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of hyperinflation and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better.

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

Corruption exists because there is too much, not too little, market.

Assume the worst about people and you get the worst.

Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.

There is no such thing as a free market.

Manufacturing is the most important...route to prosperity.

Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.

The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the other forms.

We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.

The top 10 per cent of the US population appropriated 91 per cent of income growth between 1989 and 2006, while the top 1 per cent took 59 per cent.

Culture changes with economic development.

Corruption often exists because there are too many market forces, not too few.

History is on the side of the regulators.

Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient.

Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.

It's not just about the current economic environment. History shows that slashing budgets always leads to recession.

People who live in poor countries have to be entrepreneurial even just to survive.

Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.

95% of economics is common sense

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.