"Development economics expert Ha-Joon Chang dispels the myths and prejudices that have come to dominate our understanding of how the world works in a lecture at the RSA."

"Then again, perhaps you've done enough. Negative Nancies might argue that philanthropy is simply the right hand of capitalism, its moral pressure valve, divesting The Super Rich of their guilt over the means by which they hoard wealth, offering the public carefully staged signs of humanity in an otherwise mechanistic and amoral system, but I like to think of it as good folks pitching in. <br />
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Perhaps then it's time to return to divesting yourself of your billion-dollar fortune before you die. Funding the charities of your choice affords you a philanthropic immortality, keeping your hand on the levers of power and advancement long after death, while keeping that fortune away from the predatory and anonymizing hands of the American Estate Tax."

"Paul Graham & Reihan Salam have been popularizing term “ephemeralization”, originally coined by Bucky Fuller, to describe process whereby special-purpose products are replaced by software running on general-purpose computing devices. As list above suggests, ephemeralization is affecting a growing fraction of the economy. & w/ technologies like self-driving cars on the horizon, its importance will only grow in the coming decades.<br />
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Ephemeralization offers an alternative explanation for the puzzling growth slowdown of the last decade. Every time the software industry displaces a special purpose device, our standard of living improves but measured GDP falls. If what you care about is government revenue, this point might not matter much—it’s hard to tax something if no one’s paying for it. But the real lesson here may not be that the US economy is stagnating, but rather that the government is bad at measuring improvements in our standard of living that come from software industry."

"Levies on land values do not depress or distort wealth creation and are easy to assess, cheap to collect and hard to avoid"<br />
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"So not only do we get a tax that is easy and cheap to collect, it would be difficult for the super rich to avoid with their offshore trusts and company ownership structures, and it would also lower the value of the asset that is stifling social mobility – property."

"Simon: I'm a socialist. I'm not a Marxist, but I am a socialist. You hear these sons of bitches invoke socialism to suggest that we shouldn't have an actuarial group of 300 million people and keep all of us a little more healthy by sharing. It's a thoughtless triumph of ignorance.<br />
Both parties fear telling the truth. The collapse of all democratic integrity over taxes is near complete. I'm making a lot of money. I should be paying a lot more taxes. I'm not paying taxes at a rate that is even close to what people were paying under Eisenhower. Do people think America wasn't ascendant and wasn't an upwardly mobile society under Eisenhower in the '50s? Nobody was looking at the country then and thinking to themselves, "We're taxing ourselves into oblivion." Yet there isn't a politician with balls enough to tell that truth because the whole system has been muddied by the rich. It's been purchased."

"Simon: I'm a socialist. I'm not a Marxist, but I am a socialist. You hear these sons of bitches invoke socialism to suggest that we shouldn't have an actuarial group of 300 million people and keep all of us a little more healthy by sharing. It's a thoughtless triumph of ignorance.
Both parties fear telling the truth. The collapse of all democratic integrity over taxes is near complete. I'm making a lot of money. I should be paying a lot more taxes. I'm not paying taxes at a rate that is even close to what people were paying under Eisenhower. Do people think America wasn't ascendant and wasn't an upwardly mobile society under Eisenhower in the '50s? Nobody was looking at the country then and thinking to themselves, "We're taxing ourselves into oblivion." Yet there isn't a politician with balls enough to tell that truth because the whole system has been muddied by the rich. It's been purchased."

"Current beliefs about economic freedom emerged in West during 17&18th centuries…entrepreneurs were challenging the remnants of feudalism, & private property stood as a symbol of freedom against arrogant royal rule. …yesterday’s answer became today’s problem. Today it is private property, as embodied in corporation, that has become arrogant…solution is not all-encompassing state—authoritarian “we” that has been the reactive refuge of Left. Regulation there must be; but there must also be a different kind of property—common property—that exists alongside the market, providing a buffer against its excesses & producing what the corporate market can’t.<br />
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As market culture intrudes ever-deeper into daily life—from public spaces to the inner lives of kids— there is a yearning for space that is beyond the reach of buying & selling. People might not use the word “commons;” but they seek increasingly what it represents—community, freedom, & the integrity of natural & social processes."

"There are any number of good reasons to raise the petrol tax rate. The current rate no longer brings in enough money to cover current highway spending. Petrol taxes are an efficient way to raise revenue, and the government needs revenue; President Obama's deficit commission recommended an increase in the federal petrol tax rate. Burning oil produces carbon emissions, and dearer fuel would reduce America's sky-high per capita carbon footprint. But a higher tax rate would also diminish the possibility that a sudden rise in oil prices would throw the economy into recession. That would be a nice risk to minimise! And yes, higher tax rates would hit consumers just like rising oil prices. But those prices are rising anyway; better to capture the revenue and use it, all while improving behaviour.<br />
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It's hard to take any fiscal hawk seriously so long as this measure isn't on the table. It's as close to a win-win solution as one is likely to find."

"Eight charts that explain everything that's wrong with America."