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Edible Economics by Ha-Joon Chang - neoliberal order_ through the medium of food
- mdp2021 4y agoOriginal title: 'Edible Economics by Ha-Joon Chang review – a different set of recipes // The Korean economist takes aim at the neoliberal order of low taxes and deregulation through the unlikely medium of food' > Ha-Joon Chang has been working hard at providing an alternative to neoliberalism for two decades now, ever since his book Kicking Away the Ladder pointed out that low taxes, free trade and deregulation simply wasn’t the way that most rich countries had developed. Now [...] a fun little book of essays ... restating the case against the Washington consensus through the medium of recipes [...] a restatement of his core arguments, with culinary anecdotes functioning as treats to keep the reader interested > Because one thing that comes through in Edible Economics ... is that development is difficult. There’s a tendency among leftwing economists ... to suggest that a different policy mix with more regulation and redistribution could act as just as much of a silver bullet. // As Chang points out, the fact of the matter is that places such as Korea developed because of sustained investment. And “investment” here means “non-consumption”: long decades of doing without > [What] is suggested as more or less the only recipe for economic development [is] domestic demand austerity, industrial planning and protection, state-directed lending and, above all, a focus on high-value manufacturing