Club Troppo (Don Arthur): Equality in the Age of Human Capital (HT: Economist's View)
Three quarters of America’s wealth is invested in its people, writes Gary Becker. He argues that while physical capital is still matters, human capital now matters more. Where once a nation’s wealth lay in the fertility of its soil, today it lies in the knowledge, skills and health of its population. The increasing interest in human capital has had a profound impact on the politics of egalitarianism. How do you redistribute wealth if it isn’t something people have but is part of who they are?
This article raises some very interesting questions. For instance:
…These research findings on early childhood create a dilemma for egalitarians. On the one hand, the research suggests that publicly funded investments in early childhood could significantly improve the well being of children from disadvantaged families. But on the other hand, they seem to be stigmatising less educated adults — particularly those who are unable to work and depend on welfare benefits. The poor are portrayed as underdeveloped human beings — ignorant, lethargic and unable to control their impulses. Worse still, their parenting practices have been identified as an important cause of intergenerational disadvantage.
This has a familiar ring to it. In the early 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville warned that England’s system of poor relief was cultivating a class of unproductive and disorderly citizens:
The number of illegitimate children and criminals grows rapidly and continuously, the indigent population is limitless, the spirit of foresight and of saving becomes more and more alien to the poor. While throughout the rest of the nation education spreads, morals improve, tastes become more refined, manners more polished — the indigent remains motionless, or rather he goes backwards. He could be described as reverting to barbarism. Amidst the marvels of civilisation, he seems to emulate savage man in his ideas and his inclinations (pdf).
It’s a fear that’s never really gone away. Recently, the Age’s Russell Skelton spoke with a group of Indigenous elders in Walgett about the effect of the Australian government’s baby bonus:
"My daughter has four kids and she cannot read or write," says a member of the group, who feels powerless as a parent. It will become a terrible circle, predicts another: "Kids who cannot read or write have babies that won’t be able to read or write. But nobody can tell them that. They don’t want to listen."
Some egalitarians worry that embracing the rhetoric of human capital means joining with conservatives to slander to disadvantaged. Social welfare initiatives become less about social justice and more about social control. Instead of focusing on the obligations of the rich, the human capitalists increasingly focus on the behaviour of the poor. …
A lot of challenging issues here.
Leave a Reply to Jim MossCancel reply