of cambridge and his books include the best-selling bad samaritans, the myth of free trade and a secret history of capitalism. he's also the recipient of two prestigious awards the 2003 prize and the 2005 prize for the advancing the frontiers of economics. we are happy to celebrate tonight 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism. his new book out by bloomsbury books which is kind of a forensic study of ideas about capital. it aims to keep the reader with an understanding about how the global capitalism works and doesn't work professor chang offers fresh insights into how to shift from a more plutocratic to the humane economic agenda. so please join us and giving them a very warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you for that very kind

introduction. i'm delighted to be here as one of the legendary places one hears about all the time but i never visit and i had be to actually give a talk here. let me change my glasses. i'm getting old. >> the book arguably has the weirdest title in the history of economics. people have asked me why 23 things? actually developed on this ny 23 so why in the initial period but

one wasn't a big fan of michael jordan. [laughter] you will know michael jordan but actually i'm a very big fan of baseball but i didn't watch basketball, so even i didn't realize that his numbers 23. others went [inaudible] which is called a 23 enigma which claims it exactly how i don't know but that all significant events in the society are somehow connected to the number 23, so that series

and there's this movie with jim carrey called the number 23. now i don't know how this works and i never heard of it before people pointed this out to me. and some people had a charitable view of me and so alarming to the so-called 23 mathematical problems proposed by the mathematician in the 21st century. i never heard of the guys and if what i said was true that puts me in a very favorable light that has nothing to do with the title actually. i can tell you exactly how the number came out, but i worry you

get disappointed by the story. when 23 actually is a random number. how it came about is the working title of 20 things and one day -- i still remember where it happened at the station that is very much of the location, and i was sitting in this french cafe with by the every agent and we were talking about this and that and suddenly we looked at each other and said 20. so we started playing with the numbers, and i said look, i

could probably write 30 things, 32 things or whatever but that doesn't make the book too big so i started 25. and then we thought 25 is obvious. i don't like even numbers. 21, to close to 20. i know that sounds a bit bizarre like a sketch and monty python. actually that in a way i tell you this story because i didn't know the representative of the spirit with which the book was written. the publisher of blooms for usa

describes this book as a lighthearted book with a serious problem. in that same playful way in which we came up with a title the book has a lot of kind of jokes and satire and things like that to the extent one of the reviewers described the book as the general theory rewritten. [laughter] actually meant as a criticism but i took it as a praise because i love it and it's the kind of crucial dalia laogai wanted attached to the book.

it is interesting sometimes bizarre. let me tell you a few things about this book. the book tells a lot of things you thought you knew about capitalism as best partial truth and at worst downright myth. now in the book the chapters are called things so thing one, finger to and thing three. dr. seuss, do you remember cat in the hat? thing one and thing to come he had only two things but i of 23 of them. [laughter] so - in number one says the there's no such thing as a free market. now, others of you might be puzzled and say we may like or

dislike the free-market but how can we say that we like or don't like something that exists? it may be difficult to find the free market but we know it when we see one but you know it when you see it. we cannot tell whether the market is truly free or not in any of objective way. let me give an example. back in 1819, they proposed to regulate child labor in the parliament. the proposed law was incredibly

weak by the senators they said very young children shouldn't work. how young is very young? and he gets? >> from nine hugh can. he said between nine to 16 beauvis would be allowed to work but working hours should be restricted. any guess? that is considered a being soft. [laughter] so you find the regulation like especially given that this law is supposed to apply to certain cotton sector is considered harmful for children's health

settled in the lungs and a lot of our children work in cotton factories with lung disease. so there was a very light touch but a lot of people couldn't even ticket to read a lot of people are do look to such a fundamental to the principle which is that the foundation of the free economy these people to work and these people want to employ them, what is the problem? >> few people today even in acquitting the most supporters of free market at least in the rich countries would argue we need to bring back tunnell sleeper to free the labour market. but when you think about it, there are a few that can have

such an impact. in the developing countries, children depending on the statistics come from nearly half the population. we had to leave and child labor you are ultimately excluding almost half the population in the labour force from the market. economists debate whether the regulation made that. 1% more of the labor force compared to the child labor so huge but very few people like in the rich countries think this is a big regulation. why? because they accept the fact under the regulations of the now

don't see them. so duty and freedom of the market is in the eyes of the beholder. there is no scientific way to define the free-market. all markets have regulations. many regulations. depending on what we believe, we see the market and one person says yes this is a free market and the other person says it has too many regulations and there are people who believe that the banking industry say the united states or the united kingdom is too unregulated and the so-called free banking school which i believe the government

should have a say in how much that capital banks should have. it's like they mismanage the money and go bankrupt. to see the same labor market if you are in favor of the child labor regulation. you say the u.s. labor market is quite a free-market compared to the markets in europe, but if you believe the child labor regulations are legitimate then you say that it's a heavy regulated market excluding the one-third of the labor force. you think the market is a free-market, but can you really with your company deutsch the exchange and send them on the

doorsteps? no. it accounts with three, five, whatever years depending on the particular stock exchange we are talking about. that doesn't mean anyone can buy incentives. you call the free market only because you don't see these regulations because you assess the values the regulations are in bodying. free-market economies like to portray all the regulations as politically motivated in the free working of the national system but when there's no way to define the marquette, they

are as political as any of the position and it's important because people who want regulation tend to be on the defensive and say it doesn't work very well we have to do something. all markets have regulations and which regulations you see as legitimate. so sing want in this by breaking away from the legitimate market activity is the first step towards understanding capitalism then thing to gets even weirder and says companies should not be run in the interest of their owners. how can i say that?

we have been told by many experts the to the properties get properly taken care of only one they are clear owners and since the shareholders own companies they should be run in the interest of shareholders. it is a well-known maximization propagated by mr. jack welch, the former ceo of general electric. now, the argument that companies should be running the show of interest may have made actually more sense in the old days when companies are basically owned by a small number of people if not singularly individual but that stay in the system where oldest

companies have limited liabilities and have dispersed owned by hundreds of thousands of people in this system despite being the legal owners most shareholders are actually the least committed to the long-term future of the company because they are free to me. in contrast, other stakeholders in the company like the employees, the suppliers, the local community, they cannot leave the company and not in the literal sense because people like suppliers do not literally be on to the company but they cannot leave the company in the sense that easily. if you've been supplying and

suddenly you want to switch to it is not that easy whereas you can send it with a click of your mouse. this has made to shareholders short-term shareholders very impatient. there was a result now. they want a result yesterday so they can find it. companies have to take the interest because now you have a lot of these floating shareholders and the last three decades with the deregulation they have become even more powerful at hired managers have decided to run the company in the interest of short-term

shareholders so what do you do when you run the country, first you maximize your profit squeezing the workers and the suppliers not investing because if you don't invest it shows five for ten years later. today it makes you look good because i have a lot of cash. first fall maximize the short term profits because you're not investing in machines or in research, you're not investing in training, and once you have made those, you give an ever-increasing share of the profit to the shareholders through increased dividends and share buyback. so the united states until the 1970's dividends used to account

for about 35 to 40% of the corporate profit. now it's over 60%. so basically until the 70's the shareholders claim one-third of the corporate profit and to really buy even more. in the 1980's there were buybacks but this accounted for 5% corporate profit and you buy back your own share prices. you occasionally do it and have to use these kind of things, but the trouble is that in the

recent period the buybacks has become the tail that wags the dog. in 200790% of american corporate profits was used for the buyback. in 2008 it was 230%. now we are entering, spending two and a half times your profit to buy the shares to be essentially further productivity. and the result, the decline of the corporation general motors once used to produce millions of cars in japan said of the japanese companies together

produce less than 100,000 cars. today the company has been basically hollowed out. they did everything to make money except for making good cars. i have a lot of discussion in the book but let's not get into that. so, the decline of many american corporations and now even the proponents of this idea mr. jack welch of the maximization recently came out and admitted this was committed by quoting him, the dumbest idea in the world. it's too late to say europe destroy the economy and was the dumbest idea in the world.

single-a-3 says something quite strange that most people in rich countries are paid more than they should. what do i mean by that? especially in the last three decades of the market capitalism , we've been told that people are paid what they are worth so we shouldn't complain about the incoming quality from goldman sachs gets paid $50 million a year hot and that happens only because it's worth that and if you are paid the and thousand dollars it must be only worth that. now, the natural tendency then

is for people to predict this into the bigger world and think that will people and portraits are poor because they are not very productive. sounds quite obvious but is it really true? to show that that is not quite the case, i talk about to bus drivers in the book one drives his boston and new delhi and another in stockholm. he gets paid about 50 times what rahm does because he drives 50 times better. major driving skills and that kind of way is it really

possible the one derives 50 times better than another? you are comparing me what michael shoemaker. i don't think that is possible to say that such difference in driving skills between the two regular bus drivers. actually more than that because when you think about it, if anything, rahm should be the more skilled driver because every second of his dillinger and [inaudible] more or less how to drive straight to the traders that keith trafficking there are more cows on the street as i have

seen. how is it that this guy who is a much more skilled driver gets paid only one-fifth of what the other is being paid. the main reason of course is that protectionism immigration control and the truth of the matter is a totally free emigration 80 to 90% of the world in the rich countries can be and probably will be displaced and not just talking of bus drivers and cleaners i'm talking about bankers, engineers, medical doctors, economists. i should know because i replaced a british guy. [laughter] i'm not advocating the full liberalization. i think that it would do more

harm than good but if the free-market economists are to be consistent they should advocate it because the eqecat the full capital market. the advocate the trading goods and services then why not free market leader? once again, this shows that markets are fundamentally political construct. they want to advocate of the full market, these people should advocate full liberalization by immigration, bring that child labor from slavery. they don't do that because some of these things but economically speaking that's inconsistent to

besso that feeds back into my earlier point. the food side of the story is the country's are torn not because they are poor people but because of their rich people. if you go to poor countries, the rich people with poor countries keep telling you if you will listen because these uneducated lazy people their country is poor. if people work hard like the japanese etiquette time like the germans and were as invented as the americans we would be a rich country but look at these things not wanting to work hard but surely these people do not realize it's their fault.

as i said earlier the poor people in the country's sexually can't hold their own against that quite well against the counterparts in the rich countries for the counter parts of the rich country. and the rich people in the countries were afraid to pull the rest of the country together and makes the country's poor. in the rich countries that doesn't mean they can now pat themselves on the back and tell us only we are worth the money we get i don't think so. but to those people don't often realize this the high productivity depends on the fact that they are born into and

migrated to the society's when the organist firms and the high infrastructure and most of these are things that have been accumulated collectively and over time and not something that those individuals have created themselves. and warren buffett back in 1995 said in an interview i think that most of my wealth was made is not my own doing because in the middle of bangladesh i would be a poor farmer. i just cannot create of the infrastructure i need to make my money. so the smart ones no and that's

why he has studied this movement. we can debate whether that is the best use of his money but still but individual productivity is fundamentally collective. it's not just your own doing. the same person with the same skills can become different and productive according to the society that he or she belongs. anyway, i can go on like this but i haven't got the time to go through all 23 of them but let me just give you one or two more

i could talk about that which says it's changed the world more than the interim has. this has raised a lot of eyebrows, but this one will take a little time so i can get back to it. if you're interested i could also talk about the thing 23 where i say the policy does not require. [laughter] i also say on 22 the markets need to become less, not more efficient. 16i say we are not smart enough to leave things to the market. so lots of statements which sometimes are delivered in a

provocative way to make my readers thing to. so it goes on in that kind of way. let me give you one or maybe two more. that is the sing number 13 means making rich people richer does not meet the rest of us richer. [laughter] this is what we have been told by the free-market economists all the time is that in this country for the last three decades. you have to give more money to the rich people so they invest and create wealth. so it might look unfair because they are taking a bigger slice of the pie, but to make the pie bigger so in the end of course you now get a smaller portion of the pie but it is bigger if the

demand that you get is actually bigger sometimes when there is the trickle-down economics it is not a completely stupid idea because what it says is you cannot judge things simply by looking at the first order of affect. but initially these people might need more money but if they invest their money and create jobs and so on than the effect might be more positive than you would think in the beginning. so it is not a completely stupid idea. the only problem is it is not supported by evidence. [laughter] the economists are very good at but not letting minor things like evidence get in the way of good arguments. there we go.

anyway, but the interesting thing is that this lot is identical to what stalin used when he collected the soviet agriculture. what he argued that time was by extension of a classical argument by 19th century free market economists like david ricardo hard to look there are three groups in the society, there are the workers, the capitalists. landlords are the ones who accumulate capital to the capitol and economic growth and workers basically if you keep them in terms of wages they contribute so they don't invest.

landlords despite having a lot of money they do not have the drive to blow this money on consumption so we have to concentrate in the investor on the capitalist plot. now, stalin has the argument for the collectivization was actually the logic entel and argued that at that moment all that could be invested in the soviet economy was and agriculture sector in the timing and therefore you have to mobilize that surplus in the sector. unfortunately, the landlords were not investing see you have

to get the resources away from them by collectivizing and extracting the resource from the sector by deliberately keeping the agriculture prices down and transferring that resource to the investor. actually it's very striking the similarity holding the trickle-down economics the free-market version of stalin. now course the collectivization what to the huge human cause and so on and you will know but there is also huge salmon in 1932 and 33. the collectivized of 1938,

there's a huge disruption in the agriculture sector large part because the ship so much grain out of the countryside that they didn't have enough to feed the elements. when you don't have the attraction power it is a total failure in that respect but it actually is central raising investment and economic growth because at the same side of the collective develop very quickly so much that the once poor nation industrialized enough. we cannot say a thing about the free market stall when and

trickle-down economics. they have the high your investment and growth especially in this country so top 1% took about 10% of the national income in 1979. by 2006 through a series of tax cuts and deregulation and so on, busheir have got to 23%. it might be even higher today but there isn't that related figure. sosa jury return something like two and a half times more than before in the proportional times, but this same side since the late 70's the return of investment as a proportion of national income and economic growth have fallen compared to the previous period of the 50's,

60's and 70's. so that the rich especially the american rich have become lazy and inefficient. you have to pay from 2.5 times more to deliver what was -- what is an inferior good. less investment, less growth. they try to justify this by bank policies are richer than ever yes by definition if you are growing even at 0.1% if you keep growing he will be richer than ever but the point is are we so could we have been even richer blacks the growth rate has slowed down all this at the cost

of huge disparity of income, and why are we doing this? actually i don't mind getting all the money to the rich people if they genuinely create wealth and jobs. so there's something to think about. i have to wind up here otherwise we won't have time for q&a. before i finish, let me just tell you that in this book i tried my best to dispel the widespread perception that economics are too complicated for them on the economists. i say in the book that 95% of economics is common sense and of course made deliberately known as an traer carrier -- entry

barrier. [laughter] [inaudible] ostensibly say that i own my apartment but i do not. i haven't been trained in the language so they have probably been more than others. to try to read the economics right things it's difficult to make sense of it but believe me 95% of it is common sense. okay there is that remaining 5% but even for those the essential reason for the technical details can be explained in plain terms. so through this book, i want to leave my readers with of the

reasoning and some basic but often misunderstood fact about capitalism so that they can better exercise what i in the book call active economic citizenship and the courses of action from our policymakers and business leaders. we demand all sorts of things without knowing the technical details. how many of you actually know anything about the epidemiology but you still demand that restaurants and food factories have to have hygiene standards? the same. if you know some basic principles you don't have to become a trained economist. if you know basic principles and basic facts, you can make it very robust argument for more heavily regulating the complex instruments and make good

arguments -- you can make a good argument for letting the government kind of developed certain industries because there are some industries which naturally develop through pure mechanism. these are just a couple of examples but basically, you can make judgments about the policy with basic knowledge of some theory in fact, and i want the book to be an encouragement for people to exercise. so where do we go? i think i should stop there and

ask you to give me questions and comments. thank you for listening. [applause] >> i have a question of the population. roger was the great mathematical physicist of england, and who died recently who was an australian biologist said that in a hundred years we will be extinct because of overpopulation and over use of resources. now, i can understand through technology we might be able to feed all of the world but we cannot create enough jobs. in other words, a salesman and doctors can you have in the world? so i'm wondering if economists

come and i think governments must be thinking about the final solution to use the nazi term. it's a very brutal but it transcends gender, ethnicity, age and everything in other words, there's a famous american film where they were making food from dead bodies, and so what do you think as an economist about the idea that there are too many people in the world and what do we do? ..

>> not hiring people and making it inconvenient, you know, in japan, korea, yes, by american standards we have overemployment in the service sector, but this is actually good for the country because you go to the shoe shop, somebody will be with you within one minute, yeah? here we have to wait for 20 minutes and even so you could -- these industries have to hire more people through regulation and that way we create job, you

know? you can create government service jobs, you know? you can, you know, a lot of government service jobs are very labor intensive so libraries, yeah, home care, lots of things, yeah? this solution that we somehow have run out of ways to create jobs is actually the result of this relentless corporate cam pape to make us believe that unless the job makes money for the corporation, it is worthless, yeah? no. we should say to the companies, i mean, look that are you really making money by raising, you know, productivity? because as we see it, you actually, dumping this all. you've been doing this for ages, and you don't realize it. the supermarket?

yeah, you are doing all the work, yeah? you know, when supermarkets first came, people found it quite offensive. my god, you know, it's like, i don't know, you order a sal add in the -- salad in the restaurant, it's the kitchen garden, go pick your leaves. we have become so used to the idea that nothing, you know, doing all the work for them, yeah? actually we need to start thinking about this in a totally different way. now, having said that, yes, i'm in a resource constrained problem. i have trust in human ingenuity to come up with solutions to the problems, but the thing about technology is that development is uncertain. it's essentially unpredictable. for all i know some of the solution might be to all the

world's energy problem in two years time or it could take 500 years, and we might all die before that. that's the problem, there's a technology solution, but some other environmentalist that i would not dismiss the power that easily, huh? let's leave it at that. >> hi. could you talk about whether the observation that capitalists needs growth in order to survive, whether that's one of the maybe 24 or not? >> well, i -- let me start in a more round about way. i mean, you know, my view on capitalism is like winston

churchill's view on democracy, huh? i think it's the worst system except for all the others so i don't see any kind of real alternative to some form of capitalism, but that important point is that there is capitalism and there is capitalism, huh? even the united states didn't use ways like this, but in the last 30 years, i mean, think about the new deal, create society, i mean, this is an entire different country, huh? close out of the war, there's different forms of capitalism. capitalism is different from the japanese one which is different from the swedish one which is different from the french one as well. there's not just one running capitalism. now, because of this global warming issue, i think the rich countries have to seriously think about kind of a not posturing growth as an objective

per se. you might achieve growth and do other things, but somehow we have become obsessed with economy growth and this is not healthy, this is unsustainable, but on the other hand in another poor countries, i don't see how you can guarantee decent standard of living for everyone without having a period of significant economic growth, so i think we need to be a bit more kind of nuanced whether we want more growth or not. i mean, depends on who we are talking about whether capitalism is on the first level relentless in the pursuit of profit because all the other countries have actually modified capitalism, and they live quite happily. take the case of denmark. the government takes more than

50% of our national income as tax, yeah? to a lot of americans that is like the soviet union, huh? but when you look at all the indicators of quality of living, people's objective of happiness and so on, it's right at the top of the world, yeah? whereas that you might have other good things that are in this country, but people are actually not as happy as the danes. you know, why? we need to adopt. >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> yeah, we are recording. >> hello. >> hi. >> i heard your first thing about the free market, the word "free" is a good thing. we all agree what it is. am i a free human? i'm not free in the way a tiger

is free, you know? i'm assuming by free market you mean to say the markets that are liquids; right? is that an accurate description of what a free market is as you mean? if so, if you are to look at the data during the past 50 years, those economies who switched to more deeper markets, non-shallow markets, that are liquid, liquid in the sense things are small so you can buy and sell things easily. did they become systematically better or happy in any country tier ya you want to -- criteria you want to use. is there a systematic trend of those economies that adopted deeper and liquider -- more liquid markets, did they get better off like brazil, argentina, asian countries?

>> yeah, right. i mean, you keep finding what is a liquid market and so on is quite problematic because a lot of people thought american, the british, the markets were very liquid, very deep until 2008, and then in 2008, seized it up so there's a lot of things we actually do not understand about the workings of the market, but i mean, let me put it in this way. you know, the fact that some doors of something is ben -- beneficial doesn't mean more things are better and better. i'm definitely of the view that when the central planning system was not working so that injecting market forces into the economy was a good thing, but

this doesn't mean that the most deregulated market is the best. look at the case of iceland. fiscally abolished all the basic financial regulations that even a relatively free american advantage the market has. for awhile, it looked great. i mean, the viking raters were buying every other chain store in britain and having a party, but it completely went off the rail and now the country is in deep trouble. you know, probably we need to see things in a more balanced way. i mean, let me give an example.

some stuff is absolutely necessary, you know, for human survivors. some more may not be of completely good thing because it increases health risk, but it makes our eating more pleasurable, but after a point, there comes a point where too much soil is actually canceling out whatever pleasure you're getting from the tasty food so markets are like that. some of it is absolutely necessary, but too much of it can be very harmful. >> of the 23 things you propose define the economic condition today, what's one thing you think children of today should be educated now seeing as they

will soon inherit the economic climate that we're creating? >> right, wow. well, ideally all of them, but i think, yeah in terms of practice call lessons, i would say thing 16, we are not smart enough to leave things to the market. i mean, at the most, level out say it's thing one, there's no such thing as a free market, and at the more perm level, i would say that they should remember washington so far has changed more than the internet has, huh?

>> so i'm curious here of, you know, at least in the american system, what are a few changes you would suggest to make it kind of a more humane and equitable system here? >> sorry -- >> what changes would you recommend to the american system that would make it a more humane and equitable system. >> yeah, yeah. well, i think the most important thing in the american context is to realize that this country's not the country of american dream anymore. you know, that this country has operated on this belief that if you work hard, you know, if you invested in educating your children so the next generation will be better, and for a long time, this was actually true because that in europe was part of the world, there were too

many kind of feudal legacies, and it was difficult for people who were born in lower classes to move up, but today, it is just the reverse except for one or two european countries like britain and italy, all the other european countries have much higher social mobility because of the welfare state. this country really needs to look at them. unfortunately it's going to the other direction. people say, well, we have too much government debt. we have to cut social services. we have to reduce the welfare state, but actually you know, one of the things, thing 20 says equal opportunity may not be fair. the free market economy say, oh, you know, what matter is equal opportunity. you know, if you try to equalize the outcome, you punish people who work hard and so on so we

should not have equal opportunity outcomes. now, to an extent that is true, but there's a deeper sense in which it is not true because unless you guarantee some minimum living standard for everyone, this equal opportunity kind of approach kind of takes advantage from the people of deprived background, children of deprived background. it's like saying, you know, well we have this 100 meter race in which everyone starts from the same starting line, equality srb opportunity without mentioning some of the kids only have one leg. this is the ultimate problem with american approach to the opportunity and equality, and

other countries have gone beyond that. there's countries in europe beyond that. they have created this welfare state which guarantees absolutely some minimum for all children so competition can be genuinely fair, but here you are kind of deceiving yourselves because you keep saying that, yeah, yeah, everyone starts from the same starting line, yeah? when some kids have only one leg, others have sandbags in their leg, some others are blind, and then that is the kid with all the dates, and -- disabilities, and well, isn't this fair? all right. they are the fastest. they all started from the same starting line, and i think that's our biggest problem in this country. >> which country would you say

is the closest to being completely free market, and if you want to take a guess on the other end, which country that is farthest from being a free market? >> probably the freest market is hong kong. i mean, you know, really if you have too much free market, if people begin to buy and sell government jobs, court rulings and so on, and then you don't have power of the functioning society. i'm excluding some of the -- yeah? >> [inaudible] >> oh, you know, developing countries are in that kind of situation, so i mean, that shows actually that too much free market can be bad, but i'm on the defense. of the functioning ones, probably hong kong is the closest that comes to mind, but,

you know, hong kong's a tricky proposition because it was never independent country. it was always part of a bigger system, but before 1984, sorry 1994, part of britain up towards part of china so if you exclude that, probably the countries like ireland come the closest, but they got into a lot of trouble because of that lack of regulation in the financial market, and of course the other extreme is our own north korea. it's a country that has, yeah, i mean, darfur and there's reasons they wanted to live on their own, yeah? but, you know, sadly it was an

illusion because they kept talking about self-reliance and so on, but did they use only technologies that were invented by koreans? no. the economy has been running with 1930's japanese and 1950's soviet technologies, and they deluded themselves and rely on the way of life so i mean, once again i mean, extremes tend not to work very well, huh? >> given that religion owns most of the property in the world, how would it change the equation if we taxed religious property in america? >> wow. [laughter] yeah, that's an interesting question. honestly, i do not know exactly

how the religious bodies exercise their property rights, yeah? i mean, today differently from other property owners, maybe they do, maybe they don't. i have no preservations to judge that, but, yes, religious bodies are owners. in britain, i mean, the biggest land owners are secondly is the church of england. depending how you exercise your property rights and land or whatever others you own, i mean, the way our economy works, differ quite significantly, but i do not have any preservations to say whether they are related from other property owners, if so, how they are different and so on. i'm sorry.

>> [inaudible] >> yeah, yeah, apart from that, yeah. that's only part of the equation, yeah? because the way they exercise their property right, i mean, for them to believe their own companies, are they less kind of willing to sell at the slightest disturbance? i don't know. >> hi. my question is basically back in 80s in latin america, there was a lot of debts and a lot of countries had to take out loans from the ims and world bank and we come to the 90s and thousand and there's nafta. is there any ways that you think that the trade agreements could be made so that way they're more competitive to the people in

developing countries? >> yes, well, i mean, you know, my basic view is that free trade is good if it's done among countries at similar levels of development it is not good for the countries if it's done between countries that are at different levels of development. in the short run, everyone benefits because central american countries will be able to send more of what they have, but the problem is once you sign free trade agreement with the united states, it means that basically you are not going to develop any new industry; right? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> yeah, that's how people should feel. [laughter] so it is a short term trade

because in the short term it's better to sign the agreement. yeah, you lose some industry that you have been protecting, but you are probably able to sell more of what you already have, but over 10-20 years a period, you just cannot develop anything very much new. i mean, look at mexico. when they signed nafta in 1994, everybody thought mexico's future was sorted. they joined the oecd and everybody was happy, and it seemed to work for five to six years because there's a lot of american-japanese-korean companies that went there to build factories, create jobs. basically targeting the american market but in the last ten years, mexico's growth rate has been basically zero. they have been losing a lot of

jobs to china, to got ma mall la -- guatemala, and in the meantime, they have lost their own capability to create new activities and new jobs, and that's what happens. unfortunately, a lot of countries are so desperate they they want to sign this agreement for the benefit of the next five to ten years, but in a way they are signing away their future. >> i have a question. professor chang, i think that the work that you do is very special, especially as an economist from cambridge university. i feel like oftentimes academics when they get to that level, they don't care about trying to engage with ordinary people, so i really applaud you for that, but i'd love to know like

what -- what happened for you that made you want to, as you say, you know, try to engage citizenry in more practical economics to have a more educated populous engaging in that, and then the other question i have is -- i'll get the book, but i'd love to hear your perspective on like the role of women. i guess that's a broad question, but i'm just kind of grappling with this kind of rhetoric that has been emerging about the need of investing in women, but it feels as if there's such a capitalist agenda behind it so that women can be more productive workers in the work force, and, you know, jp morgan and all of these big multinational corporations, you know, have these efforts to

bring women into business schools, and i don't know, there seems something very suspect about it, so if you could address those things, and also the last thing is wisconsin, what you think about what's happening in wisconsin. >> well -- [laughter] well, no, grateful that you appreciate my effort to communicate with the general public. yes, i mean, actually it is a bit worrying. some of my colleagues get worried when ordinary people understand them, huh? [laughter] so, yes, i do not want to -- so just even for a second -- i do not want to suggest for even a second what i'm doing here such that we don't need proficient economies. there are some technical things that we need trained professions

to do well, so that's not what i'm trying to do, but to tell you that actually you can at least understand what they are trying to do, yeah? you can make robust judgments. anyway, that way, you know, it's quite strange because when it comes to kind of drug safety, nuclear power stage, yeah, that middle east policy, for all kinds of things, people have very strong opinions. when it comes to economics, they say, oh, yeah, that's your thing. no, it shouldn't be like that. i mean, why do we let just economies that get off the hook so easily? why do you get angry with foreign policymakers and the fda and everyone, but you just think, yeah, well larry summers

is okay. i mean, the greenspan was okay, and so on. i don't think so, no. role of women, well, i don't know. you have raised conflicts that i cannot deal with partly because of time constraint, but mainly because my lack of expertise, but my tribute to women is in thing four which says that the washington has changes more than the internet has. i mean, basically the argument is that the household technology represented by the washing machine has reduced the requirement for household work so much that now we have a completely different labor market dynamic and family dynamic that come from a lot of women working, having independent means, and it's

changing the internal bargaining power in the family and decisions and many things, but to go into this -- let me put it simply. you know, i was at that, you know, i mean, it has -- the book has already been translated into four languages and will come out in ten more. i mean, one of the countries that already translated is the netherland, and i was one invited to dutch cable tv to debate with a dutch professor on this. actually, he really liked the book, so there was nothing to debate. [laughter] however, he raised issue with this washington thing. we had like a little time left so what did i say? i said, well, i cannot go into the details, but have you ever had to break ice in the river to

wash your clothes? of course, the answer is no. i said, well, i rest my case, yeah? [laughter] he was a smart guy. within two secondses he said, yes, you're right. [laughter] one problem is that the people who sing praises about the transformative power of the internet are usually middle aged men working in the media or the academia who never had to do household work so that's why they think the internet is so cool where the real changes are things like the washing machine. of course, i'm not saying that my -- this is entirely fair, because washing machines have been around for a hundred years and intent 20, maybe in 20 years, the internet changes the world more, but so far, it

hasn't. wisconsin, you know, i don't know enough about the situation there, but i mean, this is what i find very depressing. it's not just this country, but in britain and many other european countries as well. basically this recession has been created by the finance industry, but now, i mean, used as an attack on the welfare state and ordinary people who have nothing to do with this crisis, huh? so much so that the governor of the bank of england who by any stretch of the imagination is a leftist and in a speech said i'm surprised by the lack of anger in the population saying that the finance industry because they are totally to blame for creating this crisis.

the people that are hit by welfare cuts had no role in creating that crisis, and people, well, i mean, he didn't quite say it that way, but people are not rioting. we need to think about this. i mean, somehow the financial industry and the right wing media have created this myth that in all the budget deficit created in social spending when the deficit caused by the tax revenue as a result of the recession, plus government injection about public money into the failing financial institutions, but very cleverly they turned a around and said nice things and we have to help

them out so that and two days in wisconsin and two days in massachusetts, yeah? if we have to, it will be the whole country. once you begin this game, it's actually very difficult to get out of it by cutting spending further and further. i mean, look at greece and ireland. i mean, they've been cutting government spending left and right. i mean, they are peeled to the bones. still, you know, recession situation, if you keep cutting spending, you are actually making the economy worse, and reducing your revenue smaller so the revenue could be falling, but the revenue falls together so the deficit still remains. repeating that mistake in this country. of course, the republicans are pushing hard for that kind of solution, but you have all these

experiments going on in europe. at least they are trying to learn lessons from those. well, thank you very much. [applause] >> for more on ha-joon chang, visit hajoonchang.net. >> next up, take a tour of flannery o'connor's home and we took a tour of savannah to learn more about the area's literary culture. >> welcome to the flannery o'connor childhood home here in

savannah georgia. it's our plash to have you here today and share information about this writer. one of the first stories we like to share her is flannery o'connor was born 86 years ago on march 25th of 1925. we get visits from time to time who knew her. i was visited by a lady that not only was born here in savannah two years before, but grew up across the street. mary came and visited the house, and when i asked her to give me an impression of what she thought, she shared with me, well, mary was just different, and so we love to tell all those differences about mary that happened here in her childhood. now, we have a photograph here of mary flanner at age three. we love to share there's no hint of the dark tales she was about

to write in her life, but things were about to change significantly in her not long after this photograph was taken. best we can figure is that somewhere between 4 and 6, she decided she was an adult. we start at age 4 because we have photographs of her with dolls up to age four. after that, the dolls are gone. we end at age 6, 1931 because of three events. one was that that was the year her classmates told us she had begun calling her parents edward and regina, a first name basis with her parents. they are okay with that. in fact, not only okay with that, they go ahead and invite her to join them at the adult mass at the cay need drail -- cathedral here at the square. that raised eyebrows here in savannah, but not as many as in the fall when she went to the grammar school run by the sisters of mercy.

they intended she attend the children's mass. her response was the catholic church will not dictate to our family the time i attend service. she was different from they da on. interestingly enough, her mother was precocious as a young girl growing up, so there's two very similar personalities looking at that photograph there. in fact, the story we like to share here is they knew the differences of opinion with two strong personalities, not unexpected, but we like to share is regina wanted her daughter to be a lady at all times. mary was not sure about that, but when she was around mother, she behaved herself. however, allow her to visit a classmate here in savannah without regina present, she relaxed the standards.

the house was presented with this picture of mary around 8 or 9 years of age visiting her friend here, betty gene mcguire, and it's interesting mary was not around. the one on the left is the relaxed standards and can cute that her friend is studying how you should be sitting, and mary is not. i've never seen more mischief coming out of a person's eyes than what's coming out of mary's there. the o'connors and back to her parents, edward and regina, married in 1923, moved into an apartment unacceptable by a cousin they had, cousin katie, and we have her photograph on top of the old style radio there. cousin katie who was mary katharine flanner simms was very nice.

she said you must move into this house. she owned many properties here in savannah, this just being one. they moved in, and then of course in 1925, they have mary flannery. the house has been restored for the most part in 2006 and 2007, and thanks to a student at savannah college of design who needed a master's thesis project for her degree in historical restoration, she did the paint analysis. that was the green on the wall and did extra work and found the railings were guilded because katie had that done before they moved in. that in the corner belonged to the o connors, and then on the other side of the double parlor, we have a few more items that belonged to the o'connors.

this chair and tea and lamp for o'connors, and this was mary ice program. it was a gift and suffered for being in storage for so many years, but one of the great things about it is true to cousin cady's taste for guilded, we have the monogram on the side as cousin katie would have it. let's go back to the library. it was the o'connor's dining room, of course. in this room we have four of her first editions starting off with the first novel, wise blood in 1952. above it, we have 59 edition of wise blood in french. she was being translated early

on. last year, 2010, we received visitors from 20 foreign countries that know about mary flannery and her work and wanted to come here and visit the house. now, this bookcase belonged to the o'connors, and in it we're very fortunate to have two of mary's childhood books. we don't have them open anymore. she wrote in the books in pencil. we don't want that to today away, so we made photocopies of crucial pages in the book. she critiqued the childhood books. she wrote what she thought, and if it was not a good book, she was bold enough to go ahead and sign off on that. the other children's books we have here in the house were generously given to us by her cousin, and we have a photograph of mary flannery with them when

mary was 10 in 1935. they were raised in the boston area and came to this area in the summer and gathered and had times together. mary was not allowed to write in their books and we're not sure how she felt about them. over here, we have a photocopy of mary's last report card here in savannah. she started out at st. vincents here in savannah, but transferred to sacred heart further south here in the city. they felt she'd receive a better education there which she may have, but she made up her mind the only way for a word to be spelled correctly is the word it sounds, and if that differed from the dictionary, the dictionary was wrong. you can see her grades suffered accordingly. we'll go into the kitchen.

now, the only item we have of the o'connors kitchen is this butter dish. it's great to have it on display here. the other items are of that era, but were purchased or donated. we had feedback, and they let the restorer's know where to place the sink and their stove so those items are placed from when the o'connors were here. what we like talking about is where in 1931, a very famous newsreel took place and was filmed. regina used to raise chickens in the back, and it was discovered early on that mary preferred the company of chickens as pets opposed to dogs and cats. chickens did not terrify her.

cousin katie gave her a fancy pair and she not only named them, but taught them a trick, and the trick she taught the chickens was to walk backwards and she was successful. they contacted the news corporation. she lets them know about what the cousin has done. they send down a cameraman in 193 is 1 and on the property here shot a newsreel called do you reverse stars mary and her back ward working hen. the chicken didn't cooperate and the joy for us is you can go to british online and look up do you reverse and there the newsreel is in its entirety and mary is in the back, and the chicken walks backwards. it is walking backwards and that had an impact on mary's life because in a letter in 1955 she would write to a friend and say that was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. it's all been downhill from

there. we always like to show that to our guests. now this modest house which was a mirror and two houses standing side by side with the same exact floor plan is only 20 feet wide and something had to give. it's the hallways that are two feet and 10 inches wide. we'll go into the bedroom. now what's nice about the bedrooms here at the museum is that all the pieces belong to the o'connors. regina held on to it, and once a renter moved out in early 2000, the board decided it was time to go ahead and restore the

bedrooms, and so they were able to bring the bedroom funture down. it may be strange to see twin beds, but that was the original set. this is what they could afford. we were appreciative of the jen generosity of cousin katie otherwise they couldn't live in a four bedroom house. this was a point of contention of mother and daughter. there was no air-conditioning in these houses. summer time, mary always wanted to roll the bed over to the window to sleep at night. that made sense, but if you come over here and look at and see where the -- how close the roof is to the bottom of the window, you may understand why regina said absolutely not. she didn't want the daughter crawls out there and possibly getting into trouble. however, someone made up her mind and when the oh connors looked in the morning, the bed

was against the window. on the right side of the mantle they have my favorite photograph of mary, and she -- the expression on her face that gets me. she's about two in that photograph, but she would write something at the writer's workshop and it remind me of this expression, a pi on-toed only child and you leave me alone with a bite me complex. she was serious about that. she was an adult at six and surrounded by a sea of children. she didn't want to be pestered. here in the corner one of my favorite pieces to show is a table and chair set that was crafted by her uncle louis on her mother's side for her play house in the back here in those days. that's why there's water stains on the top, but it's an excellent job of crafting the

chairs to fit under that table, and they would have tea parties back there. now, regina allowed her daughter to call her by her first name, attend the adult mass, but still wanted her daughter to socialize with children her age. she set play dates and just interesting to know that if they did have a tea party back in those days and there was no tea, mary supplied the sound effects so everybody could know when she was pouring the tea up deed. come into the parents bedroom. the bed here we have one that was regina's when she married edward at age 23. we are fairly certain cowsen katie provided the furniture and she would have presented this

was a manufactured piece of furniture designed to catch photocopies skeet toe -- mosquitos carrying yellow fever. after all, she wanted mother pets in the house with her, and the pets are the chickens, and the only way regina let the chickens in the house was to put them in this. what's also a great treat for the geeses here is -- guests here is to look at the windows. we have some of the 1856 glass that are part of them, but it is -- if you look outside and see how the cathedral still dominate the view as it did back in the day of the o'connors. all right. let's go this way.

now, we're on the second floor bathroom. ed third floor is not restored, but interesting things took place up there. again, sometimes when regina would set a play date, mary would decide to entertain the guests in the bathroom upstairs. it was like this one with the fixtures that this one did, but before the guests arrive, she would go to the back, pick flowers, take it to the bathroom upstairs and go ahead and stand over the tub and pluck the peddles off the flowers, fall to the bottom of the tub, lift the lid of the toilet and arrange the rest there and put the lid down to hold the arrangement in

place. i don't know where the inspiration for that decoration took place, but i think it was an up credibly important thing to do for the well-being of her guests because early on these were the only tales she allowed to be read upstairs. good thing she decorated and brightened up the bathroom upstairs how she did, but i have a feeling guests went home traumatized, but this was her taste in literature, the stories that she liked. all right. let's go back downstairs. now, another thing that happened in the bathroom is that she was writing stories even here in savannah, usually about a family going across the world, but she would annoy the guests as they read her stories back to her because she had no qualms going stop, stop, read that again.

when they read something she wrote and she was fond of. there's the ears again with spelling. as an adult writer like she did here in savannah, she read her stories out loud to herself as she edited. the stories we have today had to pass her ears along with her eyes because she felt the ears were just at important to the reader as the eyes were. her father stopped advertising his businesses in 1933, and then try to find a job which he finally did in 1938 out here in savannah and in atlanta that as an appraiser for the housing authority. before the 13th birthday, the o'connors leave in march of 1938 and move there. not long after they moved up there, unfortunately, he's diagnosed with lupus, the same disease to take her life in 1954 at age 39. as she wrote in her letters,

there was nothing for it then, but the undertaker so he succumbed to it by february of 1941. by 1941, regina had already moved herself and mary to regina's home in and edward joined not long after that because the lupus was debilitating him and taking his straint and he passed in february of 1941. just before her 16th birthday, she has lost her father, and she was close with her father not only as the daughter, but said in another letter, when she wrote, she felt she was writing for the two of them. there was a literary connection for the two of them. it was a big blow for her and so was leaving the house. she would write it's as poignant to be torn away from a house as a person. this house meant a great deal to her. this was impact on the literary

community was fantastic. she was well-received, but she never expected to be well-received. she knew her stories were nonconventional, but she had something to say, usually about the actions of visited and those willing to see her, but it was grotesque characters and had to impress upon the leaders to get their attention, and literary community seemed to especially up in northeast section of the country seemed to attach themselves to the stories quickly, but her friends and relatives here in georgia just could not believe, did not understand where she got her characters from. you know, how did she know the people that were in those stories? of course, i think a lot of that had to do with that as a young girl here in savannah.

she was always watching and listening, and so over the years, she had some rich characters to watch and listen to not only here in savannah, but elsewhere. >> for more information on c-span local content vehicles and the 2011lcv city's tour, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> and beacon press is exhibiting at book expo america, the many -- publisher's annual convention in new york city. joining us now is pamela maccoll, director of publicity for beacon press. let's talk about some of your upcoming titles. >> well, this first title here is the blue revolution on making america's water crisis. in it, she looks at the water crisis through the states in the united states, and it's really calling for a new water ethic in america to really think about

the water crisis and our water usage how we think about recycling the same way, put oh repsych thing bins with the trash. we want the issue of water to become that prevalent in america's cognizance. >> anita hill has a new book? >> yes, publishing reimagining equality, gender, race, and finding homes in which professor hill looks at the idea of home and democracy through a lens of gender and race in america going back to her ancestors, her great grandparents who were slaves, and her leaving her very small town in oklahoma and all the way through to the housing crisis in baltimore and other places so she chases the idea of home and the american dream in this country. >> when is that coming out? >> that's on sale object 4th. --

october 4th. >> are you publishing a big run for that book? >> fairly big. she's doing a 10-15 tour at this point. she's doing a lot of events to get a lot of press coverage. >> what about beacon's book coming a? >> jay wexler is a law professor at boston university, and here he dives into the lesser known clauses in the institution in a more curious clauses and provisions that a lot of even legal scholars don't know a lot about. >> okay. in my hand here, michael bronski, a queer history of the united states. >> he's a professor at dartmoth and just came out with this book which is doing well, starting to get nice media coverage, just nice review in slate a couple days ago, and it looks over 500

years of gay history of the united states and really gay history is not separate from american history because gays were involved in so many of the important events in american history. >> i also wanted to ask about jay michaelson's book. i don't know if you can see it, god versus gays. >> we're coming out with that. that's a spring 2012 book, and in it he really looks at -- he pushes back against the notion of conservative religious notion that rejects gays and homosexual rights. >> and timely, nancy, in defense of women. >> nancy is a judge in boston. she was a clinton appointee, and we just came out with this book in april, and in it she doesn't talk about her life, but talks about her life as a lawyer and as an advocate