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

168 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuar. X farm, flour mill, and bakery, so is there a final transforma- tion within the human body itself. It is a sort of factory, the products of which are the only final uncanceled income of the consumer. In a complete view of productive pro- cesses, the human machine is no more to be left out of con- sideration than machines which handle the wheat in its prior stages. ; All objective income, therefore, is entirely erased or negatived as soon as we apply our accounting to the body of the recipient. The services of which that income consists empty out, as it were, their quota into the human body, but the ultimate result is not finally received until it emerges in the stream of consciousness. We define subjective income, then, as the stream of con- sciousness of any human being. All his conscious life, from his birth to his death, constitutes his subjective in- come. Sensations, thoughts, feelings, volitions, and all psychical events, in fact, are a part of this income stream. All these conscious experiences which are desirable are posi- tive items of income, or services; all which are undesirable are negative items, or disservices. We have avoided ex- pressly the statement that subjective income consists of pleasure, or of pleasure minus pain. These terms have been too loosely used by economists, and such use has involved them in unnecessary controversy with psychologists. It is better to avoid such disputes, and content ourselves with the simple statement that subjective events which are de- sirable are services, and those which are undesirable are disservices. This statement conforms to the definition of services and disservices originally given, and does not com- mit us to any psychological theory of pleasure or pain. Some psychologists would maintain that pain, to an ascetic, may be just as much an object of desire as pleasure.! ! For instance, of the founder of the Sacred Heart Order, we read that, — “Her love of pain and suffering was insatiable. . . . ‘Nothing a —

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