Re: human capital again

[paul phillips <phillipsp@xxxxxxx>]

Michael,

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