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

116 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cmae. VII instruments is the entire group of instruments constituting the entire capital of a community, the net total of their services and disservices is the entire income of the com- munity. This is social income. If the group be the entire property of an individual —the rights which he owns, complete or partial, in instruments — the net total of the services and disservices to which he is thus entitled consti- tutes his income. This is individual income. In science, the chief test of a definition is its adaptability to analysis. Judged by this test, none of the current con- cepts of income which we have passed in review can claim to be adequate; for we have found them subject to the confusions of capital and income, and of double count- ing. A secondary test is that a working definition should also fit into, or rather, give clear and consistent outlines to the vague notions of income which we find ready made in the actual world of business and accounts. Of our own concept of income, as consisting exclusively of services, we shall endeavor to show that it includes the commercial bookkeeper’s concept of “money income” ; that it is coextensive with the popular notions of income, including what those notions include and excluding what they exclude; that it affords a place for the usage by which sinking funds are reckoned and justifies the phrase “living beyond income”; that it avoids double counting auto- matically and without the necessity for the exercise of judg- ment in each special case; that it makes capital and income strictly correlative but never in danger of being confused; and last, but not least, that it lends itself readily io economic analysis and serves as a foundation for the theory of interest. The concept of income to be elaborated is similar to several which have been put forward by other writers. Tt is almost identical with that of Edwin Cannan! it ' See History of the Theory of Production and Distribution ; Elemen- tary Political Economy; and “What is Capital?” Economic Journal, 1897.

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