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

Sec. 7] INCOME 113 goes to the opposite extreme and leaves money income out of account altogether. Having found “money income” insufficient for their purposes, economists have conceived of “real income.” But by making real income consist of “enjoyable” elements, they have excluded money income altogether. Some of them more or less avowedly retain both concepts, but they do not show how to coordinate them nor how to include them both under a more general income- concept. In their minds the two seem to stand totally dis- connected, except that, in a partial and incomplete way, real income is thought of as that for which money income is spent. § 7 The ordinary concepts of income fail to conform to any consistent scheme whatever. In consequence, among other needless distinctions, are those which have been drawn between social and individual income. Social income has usually been conceived as the “net product” of society, — not in the sense of the net difference between services and disservices, but in a sense which includes commodities. No consistent method of reckoning this net product has been furnished. It is clear that we cannot include all products. Some are only too evidently new capital, such as newly constructed railways, steam- ships, tunnels, bridges, and buildings and would not be included by most persons in social income. Others must certainly be omitted to avoid duplication in our reckoning. If we were to include the wheat crop of the farmer, the flour of the miller, and the bread of the baker, we would be counting the same thing three times over, — once for each of three successive processes. Some economists have sought to avoid this repetition, either by excluding the pro- duction and consumption of raw materials, or, if these are included, by not including the whole value of the finished product, but only the increment of value over that of the raw materials. I

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