| Congrats, you've sort of discovered bizarro-marxism but phrased it in ridiculous terms based on a poor grasp of economic realities. 1)Peasants absolutely exist. There's an enormous invisible labor force in the US that is paid a fraction of minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and that's not even counting the literal prison slave labor employed in multiple states. Further, while the US may export a great deal of food, there are plenty of food types and a majority of manufactured products that are imported from places where they are made through the exploitation of third world laborers. 2) Your claim that business-ownership used to be a widespread individual experience is historically nonsense. 3) The article is full of tautologies like "If you have the human and social capital to start a business, it means you don’t have to worry so much about money." Yeah, if you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you tomorrow, you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you. Brilliant insight, and also not the lived experience of 99% of the world's population. Your suggestion that people simply "choose" to be this way is ridiculous. 4) The assertion that middle-class people spending a majority of their income as it comes in is "cultural" rather than a reality of saving being a LUXURY afforded to the few wealthy enough to afford it is both wrong and incredibly insulting. You're hardly the first person to perpetuate the "poor people just don't have good money sense" myth but it doesn't make it any less noxious. And that's just for starters! Wealth is a zero-sum game and capitalism is built at its very foundation on the upward mobility of wealth through exploitation of labor. You can't change that with fairy-tale ideas about everyone magically being able to afford the risks and costs of business ownership if they just want it bad enough. |
2) What's your evidence? Look at any photo of a city street from pre-1930 or so. Almost every business you see will be owned by some individual or family.
3) "Human and social capital" doesn't mean "rich", it means "human and social capital". I know several people with huge amounts of human and social capital who were homeless. Some of them then got rich, which they could do because they had human and social capital.
4) We know that most people saved during the 19th century, despite being far poorer than anyone today. It's a basic historical fact - farmers need to save at least some of income (whether in the form of money, food, or other goods). How do you make it through the winter otherwise? Harvests only come once or twice a year.
Wealth is not a zero-sum game, as anyone who knows basic economics can tell you. See http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html