[W]e will need to rethink our priorities... not just at the individual level, but at the social level... In Britain we had these weird Thursday evenings... when we clapped for the NHS workers while the government was not willing to pay even a single more penny to them. That kind of thing has to change... We need to have the confidence to say that "Yes, there are things that are more fundamental, that are more important, that are not necessarily going to be rewarded by the market, and... the society has to find a way to make... [those] people... more rewarded, including... people who do unpaid care work at home." We need to rethink the work-life balance... [A] lot of scientists say... [as] an inevitable consequence of human encroachment in nature, we need to rethink our balance with nature, part of which is... that due to the unequal nature of many of our societies... There are a lot of countries where you have these farmers doing... slash-and-burn and... encroaching into nature when there are fallow lands that are owned by landlords. So we need to rethink all these priorities..." - Meaning and context.">

[W]e will need to rethink our priorities... not just at the individual level, but at the social level... In Britain we had these weird Thursday evenings... when we clapped for the NHS workers while the government was not willing to pay even a single more penny to them. That kind of thing has to change... We need to have the confidence to say that "Yes, there are things that are more fundamental, that are more important, that are not necessarily going to be rewarded by the market, and... the society has to find a way to make... [those] people... more rewarded, including... people who do unpaid care work at home." We need to rethink the work-life balance... [A] lot of scientists say... [as] an inevitable consequence of human encroachment in nature, we need to rethink our balance with nature, part of which is... that due to the unequal nature of many of our societies... There are a lot of countries where you have these farmers doing... slash-and-burn and... encroaching into nature when there are fallow lands that are owned by landlords. So we need to rethink all these priorities...

— Ha-Joon Chang

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[W]e will need to rethink our priorities... not just at the individual level, but at the social level... In Britain we had these weird Thursday evenings... when we clapped for the NHS workers while the government was not willing to pay even a single more penny to them. That kind of thing has to change... We need to have the confidence to say that "Yes, there are things that are more fundamental, that are more important, that are not necessarily going to be rewarded by the market, and... the society has to find a way to make... [those] people... more rewarded, including... people who do unpaid care work at home." We need to rethink the work-life balance... [A] lot of scientists say... [as] an inevitable consequence of human encroachment in nature, we need to rethink our balance with nature, part of which is... that due to the unequal nature of many of our societies... There are a lot of countries where you have these farmers doing... slash-and-burn and... encroaching into nature when there are fallow lands that are owned by landlords. So we need to rethink all these priorities..." in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Ha-Joon Chang

About Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang (Hangul: 장하준; hanja: 張夏准; born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean institutional economist specialising in development economics. Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). In 2013 Prospect magazine ranked Chang as one of the top 20 World Thinkers.