Offering a positive formulation of the moral practices that are basic to the civic institution of childhood, citizenship, and social justice, Civic Capitalism expands the economist's concept of human capital to include health, education, and other social transfers that enrich civic capital formation. John O'Neill demonstrates how this development has become the political core of capitalist societies in North America and Europe whose welfare regimes are continuously contested yet intrinsic to ideals of citizenship and social justice.

Civic Capitalism examines the current surrender to global capitalism and market elites that exploit rich national niches of civic society, education, health, the rule of law, and social security, and challenges it to re-focus on the needs of children and the poor. Elite ideologies of anti-governance and anti-taxation are indifferent to the needs of society's most vulnerable, and fail to realize that inequality, ignorance, and sickness are the most present impediments to economic growth and democracy. O'Neill gives moral voice to children and the state of childhood – the site where our notions of well-being (health, education, human capital) are tested. His research draws upon the classical tradition of critical political economy and social policy in Galbraith, Rawls, and Tawney, to name a few. Working within this tradition, he provides a grammar of civic childhood and the wealth of nations.

John O'Neill is the author of the novel Fatal Light Awareness and four poetry collections, Animal Walk, Love in Alaska, The Photographer of Wolves, and Criminal Mountains. He was raised in Scarborough, Ontario, where his parents worked for many years as building superintendents, an aspect of his history explored in The Photographer of Wolves. He was a winner in the Prairie Fire Long Poem Contest and Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize, and the recipient of a 'Maggie' - a Manitoba Magazine Award - for Best Story for his "The Book About The Bear." John was a finalist, with his manuscript Goth Girls of Banff (Newest Press 2020), for the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction. He taught high-school English and Dramatic Arts for 29 years, and now lives and writes in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto. He and his artist wife Ann make frequent trips to Canada's Rocky Mountains, and this landscape continues to be a major influence on his writing.

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