It is absolute poverty that you could end, but I think relative poverty is a whole other issue. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
Even Milton Friedman – doyen of radical free market thought – was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
In the development business doing something for both women and the environment is the equivalent of holding a royal flush in poker. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
The Korean government is the first to declare that if you replace people with machines you have to pay a tax. It’s a tax on robots. They make private companies internalise the social cost of unemployment. Social benefit is not the same as private benefit. We have to realise this. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
To insist that no one can support the interests of the aam aadmi without being one himself is like saying that no man can support women’s rights. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
I mean, I think it’s a two-way relationship: I think you should not have too much faith in your own rationality. You should not have too much faith in the rationality of, you know, anybody else either. We all learn together about the way the world is, and I think it’s a sort of antidote to wishful thinking of all kinds. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
What makes a leader great is not the fact that she (or he) has all the answers, but the ability to inspire and empower us to find the answers. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
If you want to leave move money in the hands of poor people, you cannot do it through personal income tax cuts. You have to just give them money. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
One problem with globalisation is that bad ideas seem to travel faster than good ones; first there was smearing tomato ketchup on everything; then drinking sugar-soaked cocktails (‘Cosmo’-politanism) instead of our traditional whisky soda, and now this idea that we should abandon the poor to their fate in order to protect their dignity. Abhijit Banerjee Read Quote
