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95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.

Ha-Joon Chang

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Ha-Joon Chang
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 7
Economist
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
Complicated
Common
Sense
Made
Deliberately
Economics

More quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

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Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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
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There is no such thing as a free market.
Ha-Joon Chang
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History is on the side of the regulators.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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.
Ha-Joon Chang
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The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.
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.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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
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The Korean economic miracle was the result of a clever and pragmatic mixture of market incentives and state direction.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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.
Ha-Joon Chang
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We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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
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Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.
Ha-Joon Chang
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Countries are poor not because their people are lazy their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.
Ha-Joon Chang
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Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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
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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.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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
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There is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of hyperinflation and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better.
Ha-Joon Chang
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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