A Quote by Gary Becker
My work on human capital began with an effort to calculate both private and social rates of return to men, women, blacks, and other groups from investments in different levels of education.
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I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investments.
Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice.
I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.
Typically, during recessionary times, particular groups suffer higher rates of unemployment -African Americans, and Latinos, and in some cases other minority groups. If you don't have a high level of training or education you're going to fall into that category.
In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.
Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way.
There's no question that to some extent there are structural disadvantages built in, not just for women but for other minority groups who don't hold power at the executive level either at the company or in the industry. My position is not just "Oh, okay, anyone can overcome those." It's just as we work to get more women and people in minority groups at higher levels in positions of power, what are our options?
Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.
Buying a share of a good business is better than buying a share of a bad business. One way to do this is to purchase a business that can invest its own money at high rates of return rather than purchasing a business that can only invest at lower ones. In other words, businesses that earn a high return on capital are better than businesses that earn a low return on capital.
In the post-industrial economy, ideas and great minds often provide far greater return on investment than any other resources or capital investments.
Human capital analysis starts with the assumption that individuals decide on their education, training, medical care, and other additions to knowledge and health by weighing the benefits and costs. Benefits include cultural and other non-monetary gains along with improvement in earnings and occupations, while costs usually depend mainly on the foregone value of the time spent on these investments.
For two generations groups of women have given their lives and their fortunes to secure the vote for the sex and hundreds of thousands of other women are now giving all the time at their command. No class of men in our own or any other country has made one-tenth the effort nor sacrificed one-tenth as much for the vote.
Do not calculate what I have done, for I shall accept no recompense. Calculate the public advantage, the welfare and liberty of my country, and believe that I shall refuse no burden, no danger, provided that, at the hour of tranquillity, I may return to private life, for there now remains but one step for my ambition - that of arriving at zero.
Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.
I certainly agree that capital is not a one-dimensional object, and that the return on capital takes very different forms for different assets or different people.
I say to the young, be happy that you were born in Italy because of the beauty of the human capital, both masculine and feminine, of this country... No other country has such human capital.
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