Sunday, July 27, 2014

A productive approach to income inequality.

Developing and enhancing the human capital of America's less fortunate is the best way to deal with the problem of income inequality.  Some excerpts from this insightful article by Victoria Stilwell.
What is human capital? An individual’s labor power, skills, training and abilities."  Low income families and children have less access to the opportunities that develop human capital.  Differences in cognitive development begin emerging early in life. 
'Equalizing the distribution of human capital through improving literacy and developing math and cognitive skills offers a more immediate way to chip away at, though not solve, wealth inequality, Robert Solow, a 1987 Nobel laureate and a professor emeritus in economics at [MIT]. said in an interview.
“It would be a good thing, but a very difficult thing, to make the distribution of wealth and capital more equal,” Solow also said at a panel . . . in April that included Piketty. Conversely, smoothing the distribution of human capital is “a very valuable thing, and it is definitely worth doing. Thomas, God help him, doesn’t talk much about human capital. The book would not be carry-able if he did,” Solow said, referring to Piketty’s 700-page tome."

We do some of this already, but we need to do more.  The nation will become more prosperous and inequality will decline.  It will not be eliminated and never will be.

What is missing from the discussion is the politically incorrect analysis of effect of subcultural factors in various groups that interfere with the development of human capital.  Examples are, in general, illegitimacy,  single-parent families, and too many children.  One controversial theory about an alleged  problem in the black community involves  the pejorative "Acting White."

2 comments:

  1. Piketty was pretty much correct in his analysis of the bits and pieces of causation for inequality, but his solutions involve greater central government controls--which created the overall package of problems to begin with. He doesn't understand how those bits and pieces derive from governmental laws and regulations.

    And, yes, open public discussion is stifled by political correctness.

    Art

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  2. Piketty ignored the human capital side of the equation. This conveniently left him with no solutions other than more big government.

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