The deficit in a nutshell between 02:00 and 02:55...
I very much admire Ha-Joon Chang's thinking and first two books, Kicking Away the Ladder and Bad Samaritans, but he does not go far enough. He is still a traditional economist and strictly operates within the limits and terms of that profession. If you want radical economics, you have to turn to the Italians. They seem to be able to get down to the ground of the matter (always that echo of Meister Eckhart); and this ground (grund) makes it clear that deficits do not even exist. Why? Because the problem at the heart of advanced capitalist economies is one of overproduction. Have this in mind when anyone speaks about the poor. The poor are not poor in a natural sense; they are poor only in a cultural sense. By culture, I mean this: To be poor is to be deprived of something not by nature but by other humans. (Ha-Joon Chang reads tomorrow at Town Hall.)