The Role of the State | Economics for People with Ha-Joon Chang
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Published 2019-12-10
About “Economics for People”:
“It is extremely important for our democracy to function that ordinary citizens understand the key issues and basic theories of economics.” – Ha-Joon Chang
Economics has long been the domain of the ivory tower, where specialized language and opaque theorems make it inaccessible to most people. That’s a problem.
In the new series “Economics For People” from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), University of Cambridge economist and bestselling author Ha-Joon Chang explains key concepts in economics, empowering anyone to hold their government, society, and economy accountable.
All Comments (15)
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Thank-you for making this lecture series available to the public! This channel is full of valuable content.
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The problem with the “government is the issue” economic argument is that their solution is completely counterproductive. Government has grown to accommodate capitalism. You cannot reduce the size of government without reducing capital.
Rather than looking at the economy as something separate from the government, where government interference corrupts what would be a completely self-regulating system, you have to recognize that the government is a part of the economy. It grows and shrinks with the economy.
Your economy can either sustain an internal battle between government and capital, where in the end everybody loses. Or your economy can try to find a healthy balance between government and capital. The “more capital, less government” utopia is not sustainable, and neither is the “more government, less capital” utopia. -
Wonderful lecture. Very insightful. Wish there was some student interaction and questions.
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Politics is the continuation of economics by other means.
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And one thing he dosent mention is meaning in life. There must certainly be a connection between economics and how we as humans create meaning in our lives.
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Very interesting, meanwhile the social commitment of psychology "kick the ladder" of science and the profession. Maintaining its institutional monoholes and oligarchies...
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36:09 "Basically markets are run according to one dollar one vote rule and democracies are run according to one person one vote rule. So if you say that you want to constrain politics, it basically implies that you want to give more power to people with more money."
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This is awesome lecture!
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USA has very huge public service (county, state and federal). How many people work for law enforcement agencies? Then go to other sectors like defence (800 military bases outside US🤔) - almost police state. Also USA State Dept has huge labour force (+largest embassies, largest donor in USAID). In USA most low level private sector jobs are insecure and dont pay that much
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Kewl
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If everybody behaved rationally, neoclassic economists would look at the economy and say we are doing a bad job, but they don’t.
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Bro you are newly entering politics and being career politician are two different things.
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7 minutes in, the country of China has yet to be mentioned.
Gonna keep watching and see if this changes. -
heh US employing 70% of the labor force is simply a stunning number until you think about it for a few seconds. Might take days for some, but they probably don't think too much about government structure or know anything about their own.
