A very interesting historical perspective of the sociological impacts of capitalism from agrarianism to industrialism to the current post-industrial era. He makes the argument that inequality persists in unequal human capital, not in unequal access to opportunity. His assessment puts a strong importance on the family and even genetics, which I see as problematic with the modern world view. Nevertheless, he presents compelling data and evidence that describe a different understanding of the effects of capitalism on society and the individual. foreignaffairs/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality?cid=soc-twitter-in-essays-capitalism_and_inequality-012814 Because its a long read, selected quotes that I thought were very interesting: The inequality that exists today, therefore, derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than it does from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity. And that unequal ability, in turn, stems from differences in the inherent human potential that individuals begin with and in the ways that families and communities enable and encourage that human potential to flourish... Rising inequality, meanwhile, has been compounded by rising insecurity and anxiety for people higher up on the economic ladder. One trend contributing to this problem has been the financialization of the economy, above all in the United States, creating what was characterized as money manager capitalism by the economist Hyman Minsky and has been called agency capitalism by the financial expert Alfred Rappaport... The fact is, however, that the greater equality of institutional opportunity there is, the more families human capital endowments matter. As the political scientist Edward Banfield noted a generation ago in The Unheavenly City Revisited, All education favors the middle- and upper-class child, because to be middle- or upper-class is to have qualities that make one particularly educable. Improvements in the quality of schools may improve overall educational outcomes, but they tend to increase, rather than diminish, the gap in achievement between children from families with different levels of human capital.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:59:00 +0000
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