Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ha-Joon Chang
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 7
Economist
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
Society
Fundamental
Need
Block
Needs
Fundamentals
Balance
Level
Blocks
Building
Clash
Levels
Markets
Democracy
Decent

More quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

Image
Culture changes with economic development.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.
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
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 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
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
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
Image
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
Image
We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
There is no such thing as a free market.
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
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
Countries are poor not because their people are lazy their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
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
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
History is on the side of the regulators.
Ha-Joon Chang
Image
People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.
Ha-Joon Chang