Ha Joon Quotes & Sayings

Why do tax havens exist? Because rich countries allow them to. If the U.S. came down on tax havens in the same way they come down on countries that trade with Iran and Cuba, we'd have no tax havens in the world. — Ha-Joon Chang

Corruption exists because there is too much, not too little, market. — Ha-Joon Chang

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

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

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 economic theory that actually says that you shouldn't have slavery or child labour because all these are political, ethical judgments. — Ha-Joon Chang

People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

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

Sometimes people with strong ideology, whether left-wing or right-wing, refuse to do something simply because they believe it is wrong, when doing it actually benefits them. For some people, it's not just about money and political power. — Ha-Joon Chang

Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising. — Ha-Joon Chang

Harry S. Truman, in his typical no-nonsense style, once said that 'An expert is someone who doesn't want to learn anything new, because then he would not be an expert.' Expert knowledge is absolutely necessary, but — Ha-Joon Chang

As South Korea shows, active participation in international trade does not require free trade. Indeed, had South Korea pursued free trade and not promoted infant industries, it would not have become a major trading nation. It would still be exporting raw materials (e.g., tungsten ore, fish, seaweed) or low-technology, low-price products (e.g., textiles, garments, wigs made with human hair) that used to be its main export items in the 1960s. — Ha-Joon Chang

Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer. — Ha-Joon Chang

As someone from a developing country, I have a problem with rich countries thinking they can tell us anything, simply because they are giving money. — Ha-Joon Chang

The truth is that the free movement of goods, people, and money that developed under British hegemony between 1870 and 1913 - the first episode of globalization - was made possible, in large part, by military might rather than market forces. — Ha-Joon Chang

The widely accepted assertion that, only if you let markets be will everyone be paid correctly and thus fairly, according to his worth, is a myth. Only when we part with this myth and grasp the political nature of the market and the collective nature of individual productivity will we be able to build a more just society in which historical legacies and collective actions, and not just individual talents and efforts, are properly taken into account in deciding how to reward people. — Ha-Joon Chang

If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown, we should simply ban complex financial instruments unless they can be unambiguously shown to benefit society in the long run. — Ha-Joon Chang

The washing machine changed the world more than the Internet. — Ha-Joon Chang

Basically, the myth is that America has been founded on the free market; the government has done very little; it has thrived under free trade. But actually, if you look at the history, this is actually the country that has succeeded most with protectionist policies. — Ha-Joon Chang

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, and punishing the caught. The world works as it does only because people are not the totally self seeking agents that free-market economics believes them to be. We need to design an economic system that, while acknowledging that people are often selfish, exploits other human motives to the full and gets the best out of people. The likelihood is that, if we assume the worst about people, we will get the worst out of them. — Ha-Joon Chang

It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries. — Ha-Joon Chang

Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor. — Ha-Joon Chang

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 have no intention of downplaying the importance of the Internet, but its impact has been exaggerated. — Ha-Joon Chang

I used to joke that I came to England - not to the U.S. where most Koreans go - because I like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. — Ha-Joon Chang

History is on the side of the regulators. — Ha-Joon Chang

Corruption often exists because there are too many market forces, not too few. — Ha-Joon Chang

Unless South Africa is — Ha-Joon Chang

All the alleged key causes of SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] inefficiency the principal-agent problem, the free-rider problem and the soft budget constraint are, while real, not unique to state-owned enterprises. Large private-sector firms with dispersed ownership also suffer from the principal-agent problem and the free-rider problem. So, in these two areas, forms of ownership do matter, but the critical divide is not between state and private ownership it is between concentrated and dispersed ownerships. — Ha-Joon Chang

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 provides infrastructure with tax revenue, and how it conducts monetary policy. The subject has to be defined in terms of the object of inquiry. — Ha-Joon Chang

It is one thing to tell the citizens of some faraway country to go to hell, but it is another to do the same to your own citizens, who are supposedly your ultimate sovereigns. — Ha-Joon Chang

What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy. — Ha-Joon Chang

Economists like to strike the pose of a scientist. I know, because I often do it myself. When I teach undergraduates, I very consciously describe the field of economics as a science, so no student would start the course thinking he was embarking on some squishy academic endeavor.'1 — Ha-Joon Chang

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the other forms. — Ha-Joon Chang

It is impossible to objectively define how free a market is. This is a political definition. Government is always involved, and those free marketers are as politically motivated as anyone. — Ha-Joon Chang

This approach has enabled Japanese firms to achieve such production efficiency and quality that now many non-Japanese companies are imitating them. By not assuming the worst about their workers, the Japanese companies have got the best out of them. — Ha-Joon Chang

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 cannot say that we have fair competition. When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society. — Ha-Joon Chang

Imagine if all those kings and dukes hadn't commissioned those crazy cathedrals, paintings and music ... we'd still be living in sticks and mud. Because none of those things made any economic sense. Human beings' capacity to 'waste time' is a miracle - but that's exactly what art is for. — Ha-Joon Chang

It is hard to believe, but the phrase 'workshop of the world' was originally coined for Britain, which today, according to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has 'no industry'. Having successfully launched the Industrial Revolution before other countries, Britain became such a dominant industrial power by the mid nineteenth century that it felt confident enough to completely liberalize its trade (see Thing 7). In 1860, it produced 20 per cent of world manufacturing output. In 1870, it accounted for 46 per cent of world trade in manufactured goods. The current Chinese share in world exports is only around 17 per cent (as of 2007), even though 'everything' seems to be made in China, so you can imagine the extent of British dominance then. — Ha-Joon Chang

the chance of an average developing-country person being an entrepreneur is more than twice that for a developed-country person (30 per cent vs. 12.8 per cent). — Ha-Joon Chang

95% of economics is common sense — Ha-Joon Chang

Markets weed out inefficient practices, but only when no one has sufficient power to manipulate them. — Ha-Joon Chang

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 all of us richer, as we were told. — Ha-Joon Chang

As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith's basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels.
For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith's scheme. But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in the use of given technology. Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image building and advertising. — Ha-Joon Chang

Assume the worst about people and you get the worst. — Ha-Joon Chang

Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor. — Ha-Joon Chang

During the past quarter of a century, most developing countries have liberalized trade to a huge degree. They were first pushed by the IMF and the World Bank in the aftermath of the Third World debt crisis of 1982. There was a further decisive impetus towards trade liberalization following the launch of the WTO in 1995. During the last decade or so, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have also proliferated.Unfortunately, during this period, developing countries have not done well at all, despite (or because of, in my view) massive trade liberalization, — Ha-Joon Chang

George W. Bush, the former US president, is reputed to have complained that the problem with the French is that they do not have a word for entrepreneurship in their language. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

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. — Ha-Joon Chang

Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development. — Ha-Joon Chang

Take the following potent and less-is-more-style argument by the rogue economist Ha-Joon Chang. In 1960 Taiwan had a much lower literacy rate than the Philippines and half the income per person; today Taiwan has ten times the income. At the same time, Korea had a much lower literacy rate than Argentina (which had one of the highest in the world) and about one-fifth the income per person; today it has three times as much. Further, over the same period, sub-Saharan Africa saw markedly increasing literacy rates, accompanied with a decrease in their standard of living. We can multiply the examples (Pritchet's study is quite thorough), but I wonder why people don't realize the simple truism, that is, the fooled by randomness effect: mistaking the merely associative for the causal, that is, if rich countries are educated, immediately inferring that education makes a country rich, without even checking. Epiphenomenon here again. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Indeed, willingness to challenge professional economists and other experts is a foundation stone of democracy. If all we have to do is to listen to the experts, what is the point of having democracy? — Ha-Joon Chang

I don't drink at lunchtime because I'm very weak at alcohol like most Asians. — Ha-Joon Chang

Free market economists frequently see minimum wage legislation as mere political intervention. However, there are decent economic theories which show that, under certain circumstances, minimum wages can be beneficial, as it makes workers more productive. — Ha-Joon Chang

Free trade economists have to explain how free trade can be an explanation for the economic success of today's rich countries, when it simply had not been practised very much before they became rich. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living standards of more of its citizens than in other countries ... The much higher crime rate than in Europe or Japan
in per capita terms, the US has eight times more people in prison than Europe and twelve times more than Japan
shows that there is a far bigger underclass in the US. — Ha-Joon Chang

The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history. — Ha-Joon Chang

Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry. — Ha-Joon Chang

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you. — Ha-Joon Chang

The feeling of insecurity is inimical to our sense of wellbeing, as it causes anxiety and stress, which harms our physical and mental health. It is no surprise then that, according to some surveys, workers across the world value job security more highly than wages. — Ha-Joon Chang

We need to accept that consumption is not the end goal of our life and stop measuring our well-being simply on the basis of earnings. We need to explicitly take the quality of our work-related life into account in judging our well-being. — Ha-Joon Chang

Without there being some national strategy, it is difficult for educators to know what kinds of engineers or technicians to produce and for potential students to know what professions to study for. — Ha-Joon Chang

Unfortunately, a lot of economists wanted to make their subject a science. So the more what you do resembles physics or chemistry, the more credible you become. — Ha-Joon Chang

I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.' — Ha-Joon Chang

The economy is much bigger than the market. We will not be able to build a good economy - nor a good society - unless we look at the vast expanse beyond the market. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

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 exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science. — Ha-Joon Chang

The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero once said: 'Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. — Ha-Joon Chang

I'm not an anti-capitalist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work. — Ha-Joon Chang

Patent monopoly creates a lot of problems. It allows the patentee to charge the maximum to consumers. This may not be a problem if the patented product is a luxury item, like parts that go into a smartphone, but can violate basic human rights if it involves things such as life-saving drugs. — Ha-Joon Chang

Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined 'free market' is the first step towards understanding capitalism. — Ha-Joon Chang

Manufacturing is the most important ... route to prosperity. — Ha-Joon Chang

Gone are the days when the upper classes were terrified of the angry mob wanting to smash their skulls and confiscate their properties. Now their biggest enemy is the army of lazy bums, whose lifestyle of indolence and hedonism, financed by crippling taxes on the rich, is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy. — Ha-Joon Chang

I like all kinds of music - classical, pop, rock, electronic. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really been harmful. — Ha-Joon Chang

Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it. — Ha-Joon Chang

When I was growing up in South Korea in the '70s and early '80s, the country was too poor to buy original records. Everything was bootlegged. — Ha-Joon Chang

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 quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

Markets are, in the end, man-made devices for utilitarian purposes, not a force of nature that we should not try to resist. If they end up serving the interests of only a tiny minority, as is increasingly the case, we have the right - and indeed the duty - to regulate them in the interest of greater social good. — Ha-Joon Chang

The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries. — Ha-Joon Chang

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

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

To put it bluntly, there isn't one economic theory that can single-handedly explain Singapore's success; its economy combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial; reality is complex. — Ha-Joon Chang

95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated. — Ha-Joon Chang

I think this notion that public enterprises do not work and therefore nationalization will be a disaster, I mean, it's not supported by evidence. — Ha-Joon Chang

Economics is (almost) about Life, the Universe and Everything. — Ha-Joon Chang

It is time that we dispensed with the myth that the market is a force of nature that should not be meddled with. Markets are social creations that can be, and have been, modified for social purposes. — Ha-Joon Chang

Many people think that the U.S. is ahead in the frontier technology sectors as a result of private sector entrepreneurship. It's not. The U.S. federal government created all these sectors. — Ha-Joon Chang

Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor. — Ha-Joon Chang

Sometimes it is in the long-run interest of the business sector to restrict the freedom of individual firms so that they do not destroy the common pool of resources that all of them need, such as natural resources or the labour force. — Ha-Joon Chang

This is known as the Pareto criterion and forms the basis for all judgements on social improvements in Neoclassical economics today. — Ha-Joon Chang

Few countries have become rich through free-trade, free-market policies, and few ever will. — Ha-Joon Chang

Culture changes with economic development. — Ha-Joon Chang

The data are not easy to come by, but a mid 1940s study by the US Rural Electrification Authority reports that, with the introduction of the electric washing machine and electric iron, the time required for washing a 38 lb load of laundry was reduced by a factor of nearly 6 (from 4 hours to 41 minutes) and the time taken to iron it by a factor of more than 2.5 (from 4.5 hours to 1.75 hours).2 Piped water has meant that women do not have to spend hours fetching water (for which, according to the United Nations Development Program, up to two hours per day are spent in some developing countries). Vacuum cleaners have enabled us to clean our houses more thoroughly in a fraction of the time that was needed in the old days, when we had to do it with broom and rags. — Ha-Joon Chang