Human Capital - How times have changed

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From 1923 and Lutz : An Introduction To Economics
 Human attributes, talents, and qualities are also scarce, but we must be careful not to regard them as wealth. The reason for the distinction is that the person who possesses the unusual gift or talent is first and last a human being, whose personality is to be respected and whose well-being is the goal of all economic activity. If we class the talents of the gifted as wealth, it is a short and easy step to regard the possessors of these gifts as existing mainly for the services which they render, and not as free and independent persons. Under slavery, the talents of the slave might have been regarded, properly enough as part of the wealth of the owner. It is inconsistent with the principles of human freedom, which we now hold sacred, to confuse man as a means for the production of wealth with man as the end of economic action. No person should be degraded to the position of a mere means to the enjoyment of others. We might be in danger of doing this if we regarded human qualities as wealth, scarce though they might be.
 This is, pretty much, the exact opposite of the dominant view of human capital in the US these days.
How times have changed...
(More here)

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