The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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Skc. 5] INCOME ACCOUNTS 129 Any merchant’s stock that rapidly changes the individual elements of which it is constituted is most conveniently treated as a whole. To use Professor Clark’s admirable simile, it is like Niagara Falls, which remains a waterfall, although consisting each day of entirely different drops of water. The stock of a butcher, grocer, or fruiterer consists of rapidly changing elements, but remains as a whole relatively unchanged. Though it would be logically sound, it would be foolish and impracticable to keep an income and outgo account for each individual leg of mutton or box of figs. The tendency to-day, however, is distinctly toward a more detailed accounting. Some business firms, by means of modern card indices, keep a careful record for each separate variety of commodity dealt with, if not for each individual article in that variety. The important thing to observe is that the net income of the entire group is simply the difference between the sums of the incomes and outgoes of the elementary units which constitute that group. The very item which, for the elementary unit, constitutes “capital” cost, and which, for that unit, occurs but once, becomes, for the group, the regular cost of re- plenishing, and recurs annually. From the explanations and illustrations which have been given, it is clear that consistency and logic must assign to every cost, whether large or small, regular or irregular, a place as an element of outgo in the income-and-outgo accounts. §5 Whether or not the irregularities of income from indi- vidual articles of wealth are smoothed away in the total, the combined income, even from a large group of articles, is not necessarily an absolutely steady flow. We usually strive to make it so to some extent; but we do not always succeed, nor do we even always try. When income does vary, the method of measuring which has been given will unerringly register that variation automatically. The K

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