Tag Archives: ha-joon chang

23 THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM
Ha-Joon Chang
First published 2010

Ah, capitalism.  Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.  Whether you’re a free marketeer or dreaming of a communist future, at least capitalism’s ubiquity is something we can all agree on.  And whatever your stance on market control, there are probably things you don’t know about capitalism and its various orthodoxies.  Even I, who expected to receive little more than confirmation of things I knew or at least suspected*, was surprised by some of the content of Ha-Joon Chang’s popular economics book.

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ECONOMICS: THE USER’S GUIDE

Ha-Joon Chang (Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN: 978-1620408124

Like many people, I have spent rather a while feeling incapable of arguing economics, because I believed economics was a complicated and maths-related science.  I had opinions, of course, on economic issues, but never realised they were economic.  And I knew that I disliked neoliberal politics — that I, rather, favoured the Keynesian approach, if not out-and-out democratic socialism.  But I didn’t feel I knew enough about the issues to discuss them in any meaningful way.  Thus, when I came across Ha-Joon Chang’s accessible, introductory reader on economics, I was very excited.  It should surprise no one that I am an unmitigated nerd.

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