Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

If you are poor today, you will always be poor. Only the rich now acquire riches.

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?

There is definitely places in America where, if you're born into that environment, your chances of getting out are really, really limited.

The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case.

I've done a lot of practical anthropology, living in villages with people and realizing how difficult it is to get out of poverty. When in poverty, people use their skill to avoid hunger. They can't use it for progress.

Ridding the world of poverty is, of course, a fantasy.

You're not going to solve the problems of poverty in the world with less energy.

The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, ... or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible...

As an anthropology major, I wanted to understand the cultural significance of poverty - why it exists and why some countries can rise above it while others can't.

We can't have all the concentration of wealth in a few places in this country. We've got to create economic opportunity and new industries in communities that feel left behind.

The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin.

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

The rich are never as possessed by their riches as the poor are by their poverty.

Largely, as a result of the policies and priorities of the Reagan administration, more people are becoming poor and staying poor in this country than at any time since World War II.

Poor people choose now. Rich people choose balance.

Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people

Poor people always lose in struggles.

Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.