Financial deregulation reframed poverty as a deficit of individual human capital investment.

Evidence

Libertarian and neoclassical ideological approaches suggested that, rather than the state taking responsibility for poverty and lack of social housing and education, these “investments in human capital” should be made by individuals. Liberalizing banking and borrowing laws, rules and regulations would allow the poor (many of whom were structurally disadvantaged, as in the case of most US Blacks in the wake of slavery and the subsequent Jim Crow and segregationist laws and practices) to accumulate and then leverage “capital” in the form of homes and education (Wyly 2010). Rather than “perpetuating” “reliance” on the paternalistic state, a more wholesome American free-market solution could be achieved by encouraging personal responsibility, prudent risk-taking and competitive ambition. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 200

Categorization

• XREF: The ideological mechanism here — state responsibility for poverty displaced onto individual ‘human capital’ — maps directly onto the frames deWaard analyzes in US culture; also echoes The Defeat of the Spanish Armada’s point that institutional decisions follow ideological self-images. — connects to: Neoliberal deregulation replaced social protection with credit and indebtedness — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 746; Neoliberal states shift the cost of reproducing human capital onto individuals — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 72; Contemporary homo oeconomicus has become financialized human capital — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 52 (+8 more)
• SEED: An essay tracing how ‘investments in human capital’ moved from a state obligation to an individual moral duty — and how housing/education became the vehicle of that shift.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal states shift the cost of reproducing human capital onto individuals #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 72
• Contemporary homo oeconomicus has become financialized human capital #expands (0.82) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 52
• Neoliberal deregulation replaced social protection with credit and indebtedness #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 746
• Financialization replaced welfare-state collective security with individualized speculative insurance #expands (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 92
• Financialization redraws who supplies life’s basic needs, shifting welfare from state to markets #expands (0.78) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 64
• Financialization accelerated through 1970s-80s deregulation and state support #expands (0.75) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 488
• Finance is promoted to the poor as a moral rather than merely economic good #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 161
• Commodified resistance reinforces the individualization that finance depends on #expands (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 532