23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

2

Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, a Cameroonian engineer and writer, notes: ‘The African, anchored in his ancestral culture, is so convinced that the past can only repeat itself that he worries only superficially about the future. However, without a dynamic perception of the future, there is no planning, no foresight, no scenario building; in other words, no policy to affect the course of events’ (p. 69). And then he goes on to say that ‘African societies are like a football team in which, as a result of personal rivalries and a lack of team spirit, one player will not pass the ball to another out of fear that the latter might score a goal’ (p. 75). D. Etounga-Manguelle, ‘Does Africa need a cultural adjustment program?’ in L. Harrison and S. Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters – How Values Shape Human Progress(Basic Books, New York, 2000).

3

According to Weber, in 1863, around a quarter of France’s population did not speak French. In the same year, 11 per cent of schoolchildren aged seven to thirteen spoke no French at all, while another 37 per cent spoke or understood it but could not write it. E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen – The Modernisation of Rural France, 1870-1914(Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1976), p. 67.

4

See H-J. Chang, ‘Under-explored treasure troves of development lessons – lessons from the histories of small rich European countries (SRECs)’ in M. Kremer, P. van Lieshoust and R. Went (eds.), Doing Good or Doing Better – Development Policies in a Globalising World(Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2009), and H-J. Chang, ‘Economic history of the developed world: Lessons for Africa’, a lecture delivered in the Eminent Speakers Programme of the African Development Bank, 26 February 2009 (can be downloaded from: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/f aculty/chang/pubs/ChangAfDBlecturetext.pdf).

5

See H-J. Chang, ‘How important were the “initial conditions” for economic development – East Asia vs. Sub-Saharan Africa’ (ch. 4) in H-J. Chang, The East Asian Development Experience: The Miracle, the Crisis, and the Future(Zed Press, London, 2006).

6

For comparison of the quality of institutions in today’s rich countries when they were at similar levels of development with those found in today’s developing countries, see H-J. Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder(Anthem Press, London, 2002), ch. 3.

THING 12

1

For a user-friendly explanation and criticism of the theory of comparative advantage, see ‘My six-year-old son should get a job’, ch. 3 of my Bad Samaritans(Random House, London, 2007, and Bloomsbury USA, New York, 2008).

2

Further details can be found from my earlier books, Kicking Away the Ladder (Anthem Press, London, 2002) and Bad Samaritans.

THING 13

1

The sixteen countries where inequality increased are, in descending order of income inequality as of 2000, the US, South Korea, the UK, Israel, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Finland, Luxemburg and Austria. The four countries where income inequality fell were Germany, Switzerland, France and Denmark.

2

L. Mishel, J. Bernstein and H. Shierholz, The State of Working America, 2008/9 (Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC, 2009), p. 26, table 3.

3

According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation), before taxes and transfers, the US, as of mid 2000s, had a Gini coefficient (the measure of income inequality, with 0 as absolute equality and 1 as absolute inequality) of 0.46. The figures were 0.51 for Germany, 0.49 for Belgium, 0.44 for Japan, 0.43 for Sweden and 0.42 for the Netherlands.

THING 14

1

L. Mishel, J. Bernstein and H. Shierholz, The State of Working America, 2008/9 (Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC, 2009), table 3.2.

2

Ibid., table 3.1.

3

‘Should Congress put a cap on executive pay?’, New York Times, 3 January 2009.

4

Mishel et al., op. cit., table 3.A2. The thirteen countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.