The nature of capital and income

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 102659555X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-82920

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fisher, Irving http://d-nb.info/gnd/118533541

Title:: The nature of capital and income

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Macmillan Company

Year of publication:: 1923

Scope:: XXI, 427 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2019

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Income

Collection:: Economics Books

Sec. 8] INCOME 105 far as it has any recognized meaning, it may perhaps be expressed in the phrase “enjoyable commodities and serv- tees.” This concept is certainly more adequate than that of money-income; for it includes the supplementary elements which we found lacking under the head of money- income, such as the clergyman’s use of a parsonage, the servant’s board and lodging, and the farmer’s produce for his own consumption. It is also less superficial than the concept of money-income; for it recognizes that money is only an intermediary, and seeks to discover the real ele- ments for which that money-income stands. But the definition errs in two particulars: first, instead of making income consist simply and consistently of one kind of element, services, it attempts to include with this element the totally incongruous element, commodities; and, secondly, it unnecessarily restricts itself to enjoyable elements; for, though enjoyable elements are, in the last analysis, the final income of society or of an individual, the fact that they are should constitute the end of our rea- sonings and not the beginning. We shall now take up these two errors in order. That the two elements — “commodities” and “services” — form a heterogeneous combination is evident from the fact that one is concrete wealth and the other, abstract use of that wealth. To bring about homogeneity we could exclude uses altogether and confine “income” to concrete commodities; or we could exclude commodities altogether and restrict the term wholly to uses. The latter alter- native, which is the solution offered in the present book, seems never to have occurred to those who have written on the subject. The former alternative is quite untenable and has been instinctively discarded. Instead of either alternative, the course which has actually been pursued has been the eclectic makeshift of including some commodities and the services or uses of others, and even sometimes both the commodities and the uses of these very commodities.

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The nature of capital and income

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation