{"id":2854,"date":"2011-11-05T14:52:35","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T12:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/?p=2854"},"modified":"2011-11-05T14:52:35","modified_gmt":"2011-11-05T12:52:35","slug":"who-killed-horatio-alger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/who-killed-horatio-alger\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Killed Horatio Alger?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zingales, Luigi.<\/p>\n<p>The title character of Horatio Alger\u2019s 1867 novel <em>Ragged Dick<\/em> is an illiterate New York bootblack who, bolstered by his optimism, honesty, industriousness, and desire to \u201cgrow up \u2019spectable,\u201d raises himself into the middle class. Alger\u2019s novels are frequently misunderstood as mere rags-to-riches tales. In fact, they recount their protagonists\u2019 journeys from rags to respectability, celebrating American capitalism and suggesting that the American dream is within everyone\u2019s reach. The novels were idealized, of course; even in America, virtue alone never guaranteed success, and American capitalism during Alger\u2019s time was far from perfect. Nevertheless, the stories were close enough to the truth that they became bestsellers, while America became known as a land of opportunity\u2014a place whose capitalist system benefited the hardworking and the virtuous. In a word, it was a meritocracy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u03a0\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae: <\/strong>City Journal<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/2011\/21_4_meritocracy.html\">\u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03b5\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b5\u03af\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zingales, Luigi. The title character of Horatio Alger\u2019s 1867 novel Ragged Dick is an illiterate New York bootblack who, bolstered by his optimism, honesty, industriousness, and desire to \u201cgrow up \u2019spectable,\u201d raises himself into the middle class. Alger\u2019s novels are frequently misunderstood as mere rags-to-riches tales. In fact, they recount their protagonists\u2019 journeys from rags [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,18],"tags":[25,27],"class_list":["post-2854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36","category-18","tag-25","tag-27"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2855,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions\/2855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleconomix.gr\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}