Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World

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Un libro escrito con sentido del humor, rigurosidad argumentativa, con alcances literarios y culturales interesantísimos. In the chapter ‘Strawberry’, Chang explains how this labour-intensive fruit (actually not a berry) has contributed to the rise in low-wage jobs Ha-Joon Chang presents an easily digestible and occasionally mouthwatering introduction to some of the more challenging, and misunderstood, economic ideas 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. P 130: “ [re climate change, the government decides what you eat] “…changing our eating habits can have a big impact….I am not suggesting that we should totally give up on food variety, but those who live in rich countries should reduce their expectations for ‘on demand’ food.” This is particularly obnoxious because the author recounts throughout the book his international diet.

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. In Edible Economics, Chang makes challenging economic ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world. Structuring the book as a series of menus, Chang uses histories behind familiar food items—where they come from, how they are cooked and consumed, what they mean to different cultures—to explore economic theory. For Chang, chocolate is a life-long addiction, but more exciting are the insights it offers into post-industrial knowledge economies, and while okra makes Southern gumbo heart-meltingly smooth, it also speaks of capitalism's entangled relationship with freedom and unfreedom. Explaining everything from the hidden cost of care work to the misleading language of the free market as he cooks dishes like anchovy and egg toast, Gambas al Ajillo and Korean dotori mook, Ha-Joon Chang serves up an easy-to-digest feast of bold ideas. In Edible Economics, Chang takes an idiosyncratic approach to his two favourite subjects, food and economics. His starting point is a comparison of the evolution of economic thought and British cuisine in recent times. He describes the latter as going through a culinary revolution. A bland and unhealthy ‘monoculture’ was invigorated by the arrival of diverse new foods (pizza!), peak-time television programmes devoted to cuisine, fusion cooking and the growth of interest in culinary history. Although one could argue with this view of British food (he overlooks the roles of domestic and farmhouse kitchens in keeping it subversively vibrant, for example), the point is a fair, if familiar, one.

When Chang emigrated to the UK 36 years ago his Korean friends and parents were puzzled because it was “considered to be a country in decline”. Does he believe the same is true of Britain today? “Yes, but this is not the gentle decline of the 1970s and 1980s, the whole system is imploding. I don’t know if there will be a way out anytime soon because the country is too divided to forge a new model.” Unlike some – such as the former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney – Chang does not blame Brexit for the UK’s malaise. “Brexit was a symptom, rather than a cause, people voted Leave because they’d had nearly a decade of economic stagnation and they wanted a way out,” he said. 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.

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.”It’ll help to have Econ 101 under your belt to appreciate this book, but it makes for fine foodie entertainment. 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. 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. The relationship between capitalism and freedom has been conflicted and sometimes even contradictory. That’s very different from the story of ongoing freedom that free-market economists say capitalism brings to us.