Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroecono… - 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.

English
Collect this quote

About Ha-Joon Chang

(Hangul: 장하준; hanja: 張夏准; born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean institutional economist specialising in . Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). In 2013 Prospect magazine ranked Chang as one of the top 20 World Thinkers.

Enhance Your Quote Experience

Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

[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.

... I'm not a fan... First... a lot depends on how you do it. ...Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek were supportive of universal basic income. ...[T]hese are people who say, "Yea, give everyone £9,000" or whatever, and they can do whatever... with that money. They wouldn't starve to death, but everything about that is not society's problem. ...[I]f it is that kind of universal basic income which is... supported by some of the Silicon Valley billionaires, I'm 200% against it. If it is the more progressive form, I still have a problem because... having income is one thing, but... you need affordable high quality services. ...Unfortunately the supporters of universal basic income do not address this aspect... very clearly... So you convert all the... welfare entitlement... in Britain, so... your NHS service... your , the amount of childhood housing benefits, convert them only to cash... then how are people going to buy these? ...[I]s the government then going to wash ...its hands and say now you can go into the private market and buy it? ...[T]hat will be a disaster, because... many of these services are... provided by the government, which is not seeking profit. Of course, a lot of it has become privatized by stealth, but at least in theory... these, NHS and other bodies that provide these social services... are not out to make money, and... they pool the customers and... get the big discounts. There's a scale of economy provision. Instead of single hospitals going to a pharmaceutical company... to buy diabetes drugs for 5,000 people, the NHS can go to these companies... for 17 million people. ...[T]he kind of discount you get.... it's a totally different planet. So... these services are going to be very expensive... even when you give them the same amount of money, they will be able to buy less.

[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...

Loading...