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:: Introduction. Fundamental concepts

Collection:: Economics Books

RS Ui EB SE Sa 4 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [CHar. I ually change owners. Again, many writers, like McLeod, omit the qualifier “material” altogether, in order to make room for the inclusion of such “immaterial wealth” as stocks, bonds, and other property rights, and for human and other services. Property and services are, it is true, inseparable from wealth, and wealth from them, but they are not wealth. To embrace all these under one term involves a species of triple counting. A railway, a railway share, and a railway trip are not three separate items of wealth; they are respectively wealth, a title to that wealth, and a service of that wealth. Fimally, a few econo- mists, like Tuttle, have endeavored to break away from concrete objects entirely. The term “ wealth,” they main- tain, applies, not to the concrete objects, but to the value of these objects. Much may be said in support of this contention. But as the question is chiefly verbal, that is, not a question of finding a suitable concept, but of finding a suitable word for a concept, it does not seem advisable to depart from the prevailing usage among economists. Wealth, then, includes all those parts of the material universe which have been appropriated to the uses of mankind. It does not include the sun, moon, or stars, because no man owns them. It is confined to this little planet, and only to parts of that; namely, the appropriated portions of the earth’s surface and the appropriated objects upon it. The appropriation need not be complete; it is often only partial and for a particular purpose, as in the case of the Newfoundland Banks, which are appro- priated only in the sense that the fishermen of certain nations have the right to take fish in their vicinity, while their waters are open to all men for all other purposes. In fact, it is doubtful if there are any objects owned so unrestrictedly that the owner of them may use them in absolute defiance of the wishes of others. By appropriation of any object is therefore meant that degree of appropria- tion to which the object is subjected.

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