part I. A great enrichment happened, and will happen: 1. The world is pretty rich, but once was poor ; 2. For Malthusian and other reasons, very poor ; 3. Then many of us shot up the blade of a hockey stick ; 4. As your own life shows ; 5. The poor were made much better off ; 6. Inequality is not the problem ; 7. Despite doubts from the Left ; 8. Or from the Right and Middle ; 9. The great international divergence can be overcome
part II. Explanations from left and right have proven false: 10. The divergence was not caused by imperialism ; 11. Poverty cannot be overcome from the left by overthrowing "capitalism" ; 12. "Accumulate, accumulate" is not what happened in history ; 13. But neither can poverty be overcome from the right by implanting "institutions" ; 14. Because ethics matters, and changes, more ; 15. And the oomph of institutional change is far too small ; 16. Most governmental institutions make us poorer
part III. Bourgeois life had been rhetorically revalued in Britain at the onset of the Industrial Revolution: 17. It is a truth universally acknowledged that even Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen exhibit the revaluation ; 18. No woman but a blockhead wrote for anything but money ; 19. Adam Smith exhibits bourgeois theory at its ethical best ; 20. Smith was not a Mr. Max U, but rather the last of the former virtue ethicists ; 21. That is, he was no reductionist, economistic or otherwise ; 22. And he formulated the bourgeois deal ; 23. Ben Franklin was bourgeois, and he embodied betterment ; 24. By 1848 a bourgeois ideology had wholly triumphed
part IV. A pro-bourgeois rhetoric was forming in England around 1700: 25. The word "honest" shows the changing attitude toward the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie ; 26. And so does the word "eerlijk" ; 27. Defoe, Addison, and Steele show it, too ; 28. The bourgeois revaluation becomes a commonplace, as in The London merchant ; 29. Bourgeois Europe, for example, loved measurement ; 30. The change was in social habits of the lip, not in psychology ; 31. And the change was specifically British
part V. Yet England had recently lagged in bourgeois ideology, compared with the Netherlands: 32. Bourgeois Shakespeare disdained trade and the bourgeoisie ; 33. As did Elizabethan England generally ; 34. Aristocratic England, for example, scorned measurement ; 35. The Dutch preached bourgeois virtue ; 36. And the Dutch bourgeoisie was virtuous ; 37. For instance, bourgeois Holland was tolerant, and not for prudence only
part VI. Reformation, revolt, revolution, and reading increased the liberty and dignity of ordinary Europeans: 38. The causes were local, temporary, and unpredictable ; 39. "Democratic" church governance emboldened people ; 40. The theology of happiness changed circa 1700 ; 41. Printing and reading and fragmentation sustained the dignity of commoners ; 42. Political ideas mattered for equal liberty and dignity ; 43. Ideas made for a bourgeois revaluation ; 44. The rhetorical change was necessary, and maybe sufficient
part VII. Nowhere before on a large scale had bourgeois or other commoners been honored: 45. Talk had been hostile to betterment ; 46. The hostility was ancient ; 47. Yet some Christians anticipated a respected bourgeoisie ; 48. And betterment, though long disdained, developed its own vested interests ; 49. And then turned ; 50. On the whole, however, the bourgeoisies and their bettering projects have been precarious
part VIII. Words and ideas caused the modern world: 51. Sweet talk rules the economy ; 52. And its rhetoric can change quickly ; 53. It was not a deep cultural change ; 54. Yes, it was ideas, not interests or institutions, that changed, suddenly, in Northwestern Europe ; 55. Elsewhere ideas about the bourgeoisie did not change
part IX. The history and economics have been misunderstood: 56. The change in ideas contradicts many ideas from the political middle, 1890-1980 ; 57. And many Polanyish ideas from the Left ; 58. Yet Polanyi was right about embeddedness ; 59. Trade-tested betterment is democratic in consumption ; 60. And liberating in production ; 61. And therefore bourgeois rhetoric was better for the poor
part X. That is, rhetoric made us, but can readily unmake us: 62. After 1848 the clerisy converted to antibetterment ; 63. The clerisy betrayed the bourgeois deal, and approved the Bolshevik and Bismarckian deals ; 64. Anticonsumerism and pro-bohemianism were fruits of the antibetterment reaction ; 65. Despite the clerisy's doubts ; 66. What matters ethically is not equality of outcome, but the condition of the working class ; 67. A change in rhetoric made modernity, and can spread it.
