Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

[T]o summarize... one... expansion of the universal welfare state and inclusion of the... care economy... second, rethinking our priorities, and thirdly, restructuring and redesigning the economic system so they can be more robust and resilient.

Finally we have to rethink the production system, the global supply chain, partly because of this pandemic but... no one thinks that this will be the only disease that is going to hit human society. A lot of us agree that increasing acceleration of will create many other crises... extreme weather events and so on... but who knows what other crises are in store, so we need to rebuild the system to have more... resilience and robustness... Just think about airplanes, oil tankers... they can produce disastrous outcomes if something doesn't work. All these systems, including... electricity... have ways to absorb, isolate shocks and quickly bring backups [etc.]... and the economy will also have to be redesigned in that kind of way.

[W]e will need to rethink our priorities... not just at the individual level, but at the social level... In Britain we had these weird Thursday evenings... when we clapped for the NHS workers while the government was not willing to pay even a single more penny to them. That kind of thing has to change... We need to have the confidence to say that "Yes, there are things that are more fundamental, that are more important, that are not necessarily going to be rewarded by the market, and... the society has to find a way to make... [those] people... more rewarded, including... people who do unpaid care work at home." We need to rethink the ... [A] lot of scientists say... [as] an inevitable consequence of human encroachment in nature, we need to rethink our balance with nature, part of which is... that due to the unequal nature of many of our societies... There are a lot of countries where you have these farmers doing... and... encroaching into nature when there are fallow lands that are owned by s. So we need to rethink all these priorities...

Partly, concidentally... we've... seen the rise of anti-racist movement... in the US and around the world... [W]e should use this as an occasion... establishing in countries that don't have it, but also strengthening the universal welfare state that we have in some countries, using this as an occasion to push further for actions... to push back these reactionary racist forces... [T]hose kind of things that are now in many peoples' minds. Perhaps... people thought those are ideally things that we want to have, but we cannot. But now we know that we can, and... if you look... countries that have taken a more solidaristic approach to this pandemic are the ones that have done better.

[H]ow do we rebuild society? ...My answers ...have ...been contained in my analysis of the crisis.

[T]hese big shifts ...making people really think about what is more important in our life, and the realization that we are all bound in a common destiny... [T]hese things are going to fundamentally influence the way that we design new society after this crisis. ...[A]t the global level ...this has been... an interesting experience because... you see that... there is no clear relationship between a country's level of income and how they have managed this... [T]he US, the UK, countries that used to lecture other countries on how to run their society, what kind of values they should uphold, how to manage the government... [T]hey have been shown to be in complete disarray. ...[T]his will be an opportunity where... a lot of developing countries' people overcome this inferiority complex that imperialism, colonialism and racism have... ingrained in many peoples' minds over the last few centuries. ...[S]o-called superior societies have seen tens of thousands of deaths... Vietnam, Kerala in India, Ethiopia... countries... very very poor, or other societies... have managed to contain this disease. ...[T]his is going to change the way developing country people perceive the so-called advanced countries. What are so advanced about them... when they are willing to... let tens of thousands of people die so that... puffs can make more money.

Also in the process, realizing that if we all... reduce our activities... cities like ... which has never seen... clear sky for many years... can have... blue sky... made people realize that we should and could do a lot more to fight .

In the US... because it has a very weak welfare state and weak , a lot of workers... couldn't take sick leave if they were ill, because if they don't work they don't get paid. ...[T]hese people had to go out... contributing to the spread of this disease... [W]hen something like this happens, it's not like... some fancy cancer drug... very expensive, and only rich people can buy and perhaps survive... [and] everyone else dies... Even if you are the most powerful, the richest people, you cannot avoid this thing, and... taking collective action to slow down the spread of disease... has made very important differences...

[F]inally... this crisis has made us realize that... unless everyone is safe, no one is safe...

Thirdly and probably... a bit even more importantly, this crisis has made us think "What is really important?" ...[I[n the neoliberal system of thinking... that question doesn't even exist... because... in that system... something's value is... determined by the market. ...[T]his has been one of the key themes of the market economy where they have argued that there is no ethical system that can tell you what is more important and what is less important... [A]ll of these ideas about the that the Classical and Marxist economists have struggled with... are... nonsenses. If someone is that valuable, the market will make... sure... that person gets paid better... [W]hen progressive economists try to argue that there are some services that are essential, that are part of human rights... market economists... poo poo the idea. But now... the UK government is talking about key workers... the American government is talking about essential employees, and most of them are people who, in the market paradigm, were not very valuable... because these were people like—medical doctors are exceptions here—but... nurses... care home workers, people working in supermarkets, delivery people... people who have worked at very low wages, and therefore according to logical market economics... are not very valuable for society. But now we realize that without these people the society cannot be the same. We have also realized more broadly the importance of , unpaid care work and child care, household management, mostly done by women. These have been literally valued at zero because it's not marketed. Now we realize that without this care economy... product sector.., society cannot even exist...

[N]ow the UK government is... paying 80% of salaries of millions of workers, although this is supposed to wind down over time. ...[T]he German government ...so famous for , basically abolished this law that put the ceiling on public debt because... the German government realized that they... cannot manage this... in compliance with that law... Many governments are... subsidizing, and lending at subsidized interest rates... [to] many many companies. Some governments are talking about issuing [s] with the negative interest rate... Every conventional wisdom in the neoliberal playbook has been... destroyed.

When these numbers keep climbing they just become statistics, but I ...don't understand how, in the UK... US... Brazil, people think it is OK to have hundreds of people die every day, if not thousands. ...In South Korea ...despite it being one of the countries that got hit the earliest, the death toll is still below 300 ...In the UK ...there are days when that number of people die in a day... So it has exposed the total failure of this laissez-faire approach, when it comes to issues like this. Also, what countries have done to deal with this crisis... in... at least the short to medium term, if not the long term, have... destroyed this neoliberal... article of faith that the best thing that the government can do is to provide law and order and invest in the social , and maybe a bit of basic education...

Another important change is that some of the key tenets of neoliberalism have been undermined by this crisis... [F]irst... this view that the less state there is the better... has been totally exposed, as countries that have had their government intervening, oddly to test, trace and isolate the infected people, such as South Korea, New Zealand, Denmark, Vietnam... have minimized the spread of disease... [I]n Vietnam officially the death toll from Covid-19 is zero. ...[E]ven if you do not believe that... number it is very very low. In contrast the UK, the US, Brazil, countries that have refused to take quick public action, trying to believe that the greater ... the better... have had to... go into severe lockdown, and despite that, have produced a huge number of infected people and death.

[I]t's a fantasy ...to reshore or bring back home the bulk of manufacturing that have migrated to China and other developing countries ...[I]t just cannot be done, but... people are already thinking about ways to diversify the sources of and production so that... [when] one part of the system goes wrong, the other part is able to cope.

There are concerns that the s that have been built in the last few decades of globalization have become too concentrated, so if something goes wrong in one place, the whole chain is affected... It was already happening, but now.... people are saying... we need to do something about it.