The fact that human capital is tracked by class is not really rellevant. Does one tract physical capital by class? Does a backhoe owned by a working class person have less value than the backhoe owned by GW Bush? Only because of the social status heaped upon BW Bush by his birth/pedigree/wealth. But that is a false valuation. The backhoe in the hands of a qualified worker is worth much more than a backhoe in the hands of an incompetent GWB. So much the same with human capital.
I came from a working-class family who had the goals of educating all their children to escape from being working class, not because they were anti-working class (they were all radical socialists, union activists, political activists) but because they saw that the only way we were to escape being wage-slaves was to become educated (i.e. accumulate human capital) that would not only alow us an element of independence, but also to get "a return to our investment" in education. George Bush did not get a return to education (human capital) but to the power of priviledge -- i.e. to a monopoly of power. What you are in effect saying is that GWB got where he did because he worked harder (i.e. his return was greater than those who had equal human capital.) This, I would suggest is crap.
Paul
Michael Perelman wrote:
Paul, I don't think that "human capital" is a particularly useful concept. In the US, student are tracked according to class -- although it is not official. Even in the absence of tracking, poor students go to poor schools. So a GW Bush can go and get a Harvard MBA as evidence of human capital.Are humans capital or does the concept make capital human? I understand how I can accept a reduced income to go to med. school & get a higher income, much as a capitalist invests in capital, but there are so many factors involved. Also, much learning does not come from labor. Students usually learn more from their fellow students than from professors. Rant finished. On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 09:37:50PM -0800, paul phillips wrote:Michael, I have read of 'cultural capital' and 'political captital' which seems to be equivalent of that obscene capitalist construction called, I think, 'good will' which corporations can claim as wealth when they sell out. But that is not investment in any sense in that it does not involve investment of (labour) resources in creating something of productive ( and productive is the operative word) value. Human capital is something quite different. Humans invest in buying knowledge, produced by labour, which increases their productivity at a later date. In that sense, human capital is a form of 'dead labour' equivalent to physical capital. None of these others are 'real' investment in 'dead labour' and hence, are not capital in the sense we use the term. Paul Phillips-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
