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.

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Income

Collection:: Economics Books

Ske. 5] INCOME 109 how durable the instrument; it is always double counting to include the instrument and its uses. The savings may be invested in land or in confectionery. The only true income is the use of the land or the use of the confec- tionery. To include also the value of the land or the value of the confectionery is to count asincome the capi- talization of income. § 5 Economists have been more or less aware of the pitfall of double counting, but not of the reason for it. They have therefore attempted to avoid it, not by excluding all commodities from the income concept and restricting it to services, but by specifically excluding from income certain groups of commodities. Naturally, they have been at a loss to formulate a satisfactory and logical principle for this exclusion. Some of them have no better suggestion to offer than that all “large” or “unusual” acquisitions should be ruled out, and that only those commodities which come into a man’s possession in a “regular” stream shall be en- titled to the name income. This makeshift has received much currency among German writers. To be sure, it serves the purpose of excluding from income such obvi- ously inappropriate elements as bequests and gifts of large fortunes. It is clear that when a well-known millionaire recently fell heir to seventy millions, this did not con- stitute his income for the year in which he received it, but that it merely constituted the principal or capital from which he would receive income in subsequent years. But the reason that it is improper to call this suddenly acquired fortune income is not that it was large, nor that it was sudden, but that it consisted of rights to concrete wealth — factories, ships, railways, and dwellings. These things are not under any circumstances income, but yield income through future uses. It is idle to call income “regular”; for we all know that it is irregular.

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