Asymmetric Protectionism — Ramanan

Ha-Joon Chang.

The Case for Concerted Action
Asymmetric Protectionism
V. Ramanan

Ramanan — Ha-Joon Chang — Economics For People

Lecture series on YouTube for your upcoming holiday edification.

The Case for Concerted Action
Ha-Joon Chang — Economics For People
V. Ramanan

Julia Mead — Why Millennials Aren’t Afraid of Socialism

So we will be the opposition—but we’re not starting from scratch.... Heterodox economists like Ha-Joon Chang, Mariana Mazzucato, and Stephanie Kelton are reshaping their discipline.

Julia Mead is a 22 year old.

The Nation
Why Millennials Aren’t Afraid of Socialism
Julia Mead

JW Mason — 3 on international trade and balance of payments

"Free trade" seems to be the hot topic now.

J. W. Mason's Blog

We’ve Always Had Free Trade with Eastasia

How to Think about the Balance of Payments

How to Think about the Balance of Payments: The US Position 2012-2013

JW Mason | Assistant Professor of Economics, John Jay College, City University of New York

How To Use Economics & Not Be Used By Economists (2 & 3 of 6) — Lynn Fries interviews Ha-Joon Chang

Video and transcript

So talk now about the other type. Give us an example of a political assumption that's hidden.

CHANG: So in trying to make what they do a science, Neoclassical economists have adopted this ethical criteria called the Pareto principle. Now, Pareto principle, what it says is that you cannot call a social change an improvement if it hurts even one person. Now, this is an important attempt to defend individuals against the tyranny of the majority, because if you begin to say, well you know, you can override minorities, where do you stop? I mean, before you know it you're in the same bed as Hitler and Stalin. So you know, the Pareto principle is quite an important principle.

But it still is a political principle. Because it assumes that the existing distribution of income, wealth, and power is a legitimate one and it, more importantly, assumes that you cannot disturb that status quo. So go to the other extreme and imagine a case where one dictator or one small group of elite own, I don’t know, 50%, 70% of national income. In that kind of society you might say, well, if these people give up 5% of what they have, we can eradicate extreme poverty. Well, according to the Pareto principle you cannot do that kind of thing because it will make those that are a minority worse off.

So I mean, I'm not saying that this is an easy decision to make. I mean, taken to the extreme any ethical principle becomes a monster. That's my general view. So I'm not saying that the Pareto principle is necessarily right or wrong, but you have to realize that it has a particular political bias towards the status quo. And in that sense economics can never become a science because there's always this ethical and political judgment that you are making when you are doing this apparently, you know, technical, scientific analysis.

Real New Network
How To Use Economics & Not Be Used By Economists (2/6)

How to Use Economics & Not Be Used By Economists (3/6)

Lynn Fries interviews Ha-Joon Chang

Phillip Inman — Economics students aim to tear up free-market syllabus

The revolution is on.

Undergraduates at Manchester University propose overhaul of orthodox teachings to embrace alternative theories

Cambridge University's Ha-Joon Chang is backing the students.

The Guardian
Economics students aim to tear up free-market syllabus
Phillip Inman, economics correspondent

See also  Post-Crash Economics: The world has changed, the syllabus hasn’t – is it time to do something about it?

Ha-Joon Chang— "Economics, as it has been practised in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people."

"Over the last three decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions of the 2008 crisis (and dozens of smaller financial crises that came before it since the early 1980s, such as the 1982 Third World debt crisis, the 1995 Mexican peso crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis) by providing theoretical justifications for financial deregulation and the unrestrained pursuit of short-term profits. More broadly, they advanced theories that justified the policies that have led to slower growth, higher inequality, heightened job insecurity and more frequently financial crises that have dogged the world in the last three decades... On top of that, they pushed for policies that weakened the prospects for long-term development in developing countries... In the rich countries, these economists encouraged people to overestimate the power of new technologies..., made people's lives more and more unstable..., made them ignore the loss of national control over the economy..., and rendered them complacent about de-industrialization... Moreover, they supplied arguments that insist that all these economic outcomes that many people find objectionable in this world - such as rising inequality..., sky-high executive salaries... or extreme poverty in poor countries... - are really inevitable, given (selfish and rational) human nature and the need to reward people according to their productive contributions.

In other words, economics has been worse than irrelevant. Economics, as it has been practised in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people." -- Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. Bloomsbury Press (2011). [emphasis added]

Quoted by Robert Vienneau at Thoughts on Economics

Economists Working To Increase The Pain And Misery Of Billions

Ha-Joon Chang on whether Occupy is anti-capitalist

Ha-Joon Chang is the author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. He has posted an op-ed at the Guardian on his view of Occupy wrt to capitalism.

Capitalism has many guises. Pigeonholing protesters will only allow those who are against reform to avoid the issue 

The Occupy London movement is marking its first month this week. It is routinely described as anti-capitalist, but this label is highly misleading. As I found out when I gave a lecture at its Tent City University last weekend, many of its participants are not against capitalism. They just want it better regulated so that it benefits the greatest possible majority.

But even accepting that the label accurately describes some participants in the movement, what does being anti-capitalist actually mean?

Many Americans, for example, consider countries like France and Sweden to be socialist or anti-capitalist – yet, were their 19th-century ancestors able to time-travel to today, they would almost certainly have called today's US socialist. They would have been shocked to find that their beloved country had decided to punish industry and enterprise with a progressive income tax. To their horror, they would also see that children had been deprived of the freedom to work and adults "the liberty of working as long as [they] wished", as the US supreme court put it in 1905 when ruling unconstitutional a New York state act limiting the working hours of bakers to 10 hours a day. What is capitalist, and thus anti-capitalist, it seems, depends on who you are....

He concludes:

By labelling the Occupy movement "anti-capitalist", those who do not want reforms have been able to avoid the real debate. This has to stop. It is time we use the Occupy movement as the catalyst for a serious debate on alternative institutional arrangements that will make British (or for that matter, any other) capitalism better for the majority of people. 

Read the whole op-ed at The Guardian
Anti-capitalist? Too simple. Occupy can be the catalyst for a radical rethink

by Ha-Joon Chang

(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)