The nature of capital and income

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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

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Income

Collection:: Economics Books

112 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cmar. VII reckoning instead of a real payment is to that extent inadequate. §6 We have now seen how the fatal inclusion of concrete wealth by the side of abstract services as a part of income has led economists into two errors, — one the confusion of capital with income, and the other the fallacy of double counting. We now proceed to consider the other mistake in the ordinary concept of real income, namely, that due to the needless restriction introduced by the term “enjoy- able.” Real income, we were told, consists of “enjoyable commodities and services.” We have thus far succeeded in eliminating “commodities” from this formula; we now proceed to show that we may also eliminate “enjoyable,” and leave the very simple formula: Income consists of serpices. It is quite true that when we put together all the elements which go to make up the total income of a com- munity or of an individual, and deduct all the negative elements, or outgoes, we shall find that there are then left solely enjoyable services. But the various elements which are thus combined — the income from factories, mines, farms, and other instruments or groups of instruments — do not all consist of enjoyable services. Most of them consist of intermediate services preparatory to enjoyable services. How these intermediate services cancel them- selves out in the final summation will form the subject of a future chapter. At present we are merely concerned in pointing out that any adequate concept of income must leave room for these intermediate services, 1.e. for the income rendered by a factory or a bank as well as that yielded by a dwelling or a pleasure yacht. We have already had occasion to note the inadequacy of that concept of income which restricts it to the yielding of money; we now need to observe the inadequacy of that concept which

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