Quote

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

Ha-Joon Chang

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ha-Joon Chang
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 7
Economist
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
People
Income
Tend
Spend
Higher
Redistribute
Wealth
Downward
Economy
Poorer
Best
Boost
Way
Proportion

More quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

Image
The Korean economic miracle was the result of a clever and pragmatic mixture of market incentives and state direction.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
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.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
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 bigger slice of the pie all right, but they have actually reduced the pace at which the pie is growing.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
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.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
In manufacturing, where mechanization and the use of chemical processes are much easier, it is easier to raise productivity than in services. In contrast, by their very nature, many service activities are inherently impervious to productivity increase without diluting the quality of the product.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
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.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
There is no such thing as a free market.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
People who live in poor countries have to be entrepreneurial even just to survive.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
The free market doesn't exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
History is on the side of the regulators.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.
Ha-Joon Chang