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

TAR Gi aR — Br —— Sec. 5] PSYCHIC INCOME 171 have often puzzled economists, and the question has been asked whether any allowance should be made for disagree- able trades, such as that of the hangman, and whether it is fair to say that a workingman who earns $500 a year by the sweat of his brow really gets as much as a capitalist who receives an effortless $500 from stocks and bonds. The answer to these questions is now evident. So far as objective income is concerned, no allowance should be made. That is, the returns to the laborer are all to be counted gross and not net, no deduction being made on account of so-called “mental anguish’ or painful feelings. Objective income stops at the threshold of the laborer’s body. It does not follow beyond this point and include what the body communicates to the mind." But, by passing to subjective income, we avoid some of the manifest unfairness in the usual statistical comparisons which contrast a capitalist’s income with that of a laborer, or contrast with each other the incomes of various labor- ers, some of whose tasks are difficult and others easy. To obtain one’s net income we must subtract from the sub- jective satisfactions the subjective efforts of attainment. A laborer who receives $2 a day may work so hard for it as to justify a deduction of $1.50 for the effort, whereas the laborer who receives $1 a day may possibly need to deduct only 25 cents. The nominally $2 man would then be receiving a net income of only 50 cents a day, whereas the nominally $1 man would be receiving one worth 75 ! The only way in which a man’s person contributes to such objec- tive income is, as has been implied in our illustrative accounts, through the work he performs upon external objects, in order that these may, in Objective income thus includes all turn, yield back service to him. 3 : the results of his own bodily exertions so far as they come to him via these outside agencies. A farmer, for instance, sows wheat, which is sold and yields him income. The farmer’s services here start a circuitous process which is transmitted through the farm, the crops, the wheat, the proceeds from selling the wheat, the enjoyable com- modities purchased with these proceeds, and finally his own person again, to which those commodities minister.

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