Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

I was at the forefront of the effort to pass $15 minimum wage in Seattle, and have been collaborating with the people who are trying to make that happen across the country.

How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what's intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way you'll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain't got no business with!

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done.

It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

We do not just strive for a society in which every person has the opportunity to reach their full potential (all parties lay claim to that); we want to build a society in which whatever talents people have, they are rewarded with a comfortable standard of living when they apply them.

The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.

There seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.

We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people.

Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money NOT helping other people.

Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?

The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well.

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.

I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax.

Gay people do not fight for freedom to live in a lavender bubble, but in a more just society.

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

We've got to start also holding people accountable, and we've got to reward people who succeed. But somehow in Washington today - and I'm afraid on Wall Street - greed is rewarded, excess is rewarded, and corruption - or certainly failure to carry out our responsibility is rewarded.

If a group of people - leaders - can convince a group of folk who barely have a pot to piss in that the rich shouldn't be taxed-- THAT is leadership!

Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same - to bring people back from their present strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless, average, divine, original concrete.

You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.

In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be greedy, while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show compassion.

I'm no communist.I'm a tax cutting Conservative. But I want a capitalism that is fairer to forgotten people.

I will always work for human rights for all people.