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 III. Capital and income

Collection:: Economics Books

184 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuae. XI tion has a credit as well as a debit side, and that, as to income, every interaction is at once a service and a dis- service. We observed that the method of couples, fully carried out, reveals respectively wherein capital and income ulti- mately consist. We have seen that such a summation, applied to capital, gradually obliterates all partial rights, such as stocks and bonds, and leaves as the final result the concrete capital wealth of a community; and that when the method of couples is applied to income accounts, the “Interactions” involved disappear, leaving an uncanceled outer fringe of services and disservices. If the method is continued as far as possible in the world of objective serv- ices, it leaves simply the direct or final services of objec- tive wealth as they affect the human organism ; while, if the method is pushed one step further, it leaves, as the final income stream, simply the pleasant and unpleasant experiences of human consciousness. We found as one result of our study that so-called cost of production has no existence as an element of the objective income stream, and that, therefore, the only costs of production which are not also elements of income are the subjective labor and trouble of those engaged in that production. We have seen that capital and income are in many re- spects analogous, and are strictly correlative: that all capi- tal yields income and that all income flows from capital —at least when the term “ capital ” is used in its broader sense, which includes human beings. The old proposition of the economists, therefore, that capital is that wealth which yields income, is correct, although the idea that such a statement is restrictive, and applicable only to certain kinds of wealth, is incorrect. §2 Since capital and income are so intimately related, it becomes necessary to examine in detail what their relations are. The chief relations between capital and income are

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