P130: “[more re climate change] “…we need to drive less in personal vehicles….” And government has to determine better living arrangements for us- so we can walk to stores or use public transportation. This is the same egomania that underlined Stalin and Mao’s collectivization drives that killed millions. This book isn't about the economy of food production from planting to the market's shelf but about worldwide economics explained through food, a clever concept that makes economics accessible for the layperson.

Over time I’ve become more and more convinced that in a capitalist economy, democracy is meaningless without everyone knowing some economics because so many decisions are bound up with it,” Chang explained when we met in Sushi Samba, a JapaneseSouth American restaurant, in central London.Economics affects all aspects of our lives – but who is writing the basic recipe we're cooking from, and how much do we really know about the ingredients? There has been a lot more industrial policy than people realize. To put it more bluntly, the Silicon Valley would not have existed without US government funding for initial technologies like the computer, the internet, and GPS. All of these were funded by the Pentagon. Semiconductor research was initially funded by the US Navy. This is the intro to economics we all needed 10 years ago in school and it certainly is the one we need now to make sense of all sorts of conversations in the media. It’ll help to have Econ 101 under your belt to appreciate this book, but it makes for fine foodie entertainment.

My two greatest passions are food and economics, and I thought that this book was a natural pairing of two things that I dearly love. For one reason or another, I never got to write this book until couple of years ago. Chang was close to the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell (“a very smart guy”) when he was on Labour’s front bench, but he is not enthused by the party’s present leadership. “Keir Starmer is basically saying we’ll maintain the same model with a few modifications, fewer rough edges, maybe a bit more caring. He’s not proposing to reindustrialise Britain or seriously reform the financial system.” While I did find some of Chang’s opinions to be distinctly British — though born and raised in South Korea, Ha-Joon Chang attended university and now teaches in the UK — it was still easy to remind myself that this is a book of opinions as much as it is a book of fact. It’s not a textbook, but rather a unique economic overview from one individual’s perspective. I do appreciate the author’s evident extended effort to present ideas and concepts fairly, particularly multiple discussions of different versions and perspectives of the same theories, but the overarching author’s voice and bias is still ever-present. Fortunately, Ha-Joon Chang’s final recommendation to the reader is to understand that every perspective is just that: a perspective. Economics, though presented as firmly rooted in hard data and science, is just as much a matter of opinion as most things in this world. What people are now doing is saying that these policies are needed, especially with the big shifts that are coming to the global economy. A lot of countries are being more honest and admitting that the government has always played an important role in industrial development, so they’re now thinking they might as well do it in a more systematic way. For starters, this book is not about the economics of food. It's rather a compilation of personal anecdotes, food history tidbits, and a critique of economic theories to explain the world we live in.For decades, a single free-market philosophy has dominated global economics. But this is bland and unhealthy—like British food in the 1980s, when best-selling author and economist Ha-Joon Chang first arrived in the UK from South Korea. Just as eating a wide range of cuisines contributes to a more interesting and balanced diet, so, too, is it essential we listen to a variety of economic perspectives. P111: “[re education] In other words, equality of opportunity is not enough; we need a relatively high degree of outcome.” Only when we balance these different types of freedoms will we have a more balanced society or more humane form of capitalism. I don’t believe that there’s just one kind of capitalism. There are many different kinds, and we can make institutional changes to make capitalism more humane. Economic thinking - about globalisation, climate change, immigration, austerity, automation and much more - in its most digestible form

Este libro es fascinante porque conjuga con eficacia la gastronomía, la historia , la geografía y la economía. Permite viajar en el tiempo, por lugares diversos, conociendo detalles sabrosos de los alimentos y de ricas tradiciones culinarias, enlazando todo aquello con reflexiones convincentes sobre problemáticas económicas que repercuten en la vida cotidiana de todos los habitantes de este planeta.

The titles of the sections might sound rather generic or dry, but the writing is anything but. Each chapter has a recipe as a header, not in full but as a list of ingredients that go into the recipe that showcases the food item used as an example to discuss the theme of the chapter. I'm not much of a recipe enthusiast, but sometimes I wanted to know the preparation part of the recipe mentioned. I guess it's left like that, just a list, so we can experiment if we want? Un libro escrito con sentido del humor, rigurosidad argumentativa, con alcances literarios y culturales interesantísimos. If austerity did not lead to a more just society, it also did not lead to a more prosperous economy. Since the 2007-08 crash, the UK economy has expanded at an average annual rate of just 0.9 per cent (compared with 2.7 per cent before the crisis). Of the G7 countries only Italy has fared worse.