My soon-to-be-colleague Branko Milanovic writes forcefully against the term “human capital”; Elizabeth Bruenig notes an especially unpleasant use of the term by reformicons trying to sell child tax credits to their conservative allies.

I’m in agreement with both. It’s actually shocking how readily we have fallen into rhetoric that treats human beings as assets; it’s closely related to the remarkable, equally shocking way that we now talk about medical patients as health care “consumers”.

But I think there’s a bit more to add.

Branko says that the essential difference between skills and physical capital is that the former aren’t worth anything unless you work, and that is certainly an essential difference. I would, however, also emphasize the flip side: if you think of capital as something that rentiers can own, which is surely one of the important things we connote when we use the c-word, then labor force skills are not capital in that sense. Children of the wealthy can inherit or buy factories and buildings; absent indentured servitude or the coming of androids, they can’t buy worker skills.

Meanwhile, Bruenig is unhappy with James Pethokoukis for trying to sell humanitarian policies, more or less, as a cynical pro-capitalist ploy (which is, to give credit where it’s due, the opposite of the usual thing on the right). What I immediately noted was that Pethokoukis is wrong about what actually works in the direction he wants. He argues that big welfare states discourage having children, and dismisses pro-natalist policies as ineffectual. Here are fertility rates in advanced countries:

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The two most extensive, generous welfare states in the world — France and Sweden — also have higher fertility than we do, significantly so in the case of France. And there’s a reason: strong pro-natalist policies, which greatly reduce the burden, financial and otherwise, of raising children. As I’ve written in the past, if you want to see policy informed by genuine family values — as opposed to “pro-family” values that are actually about patriarchy — France is a much better example than America.