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:: Introduction. Fundamental concepts

Collection:: Economics Books

Ske. 2] WEALTH 5 Any single object of wealth is called an article of wealth, an item of wealth, or an instrument. The term ‘““instru- ment” is perhaps the most convenient. It appears to have been first employed by John Rae in 1834." § 2 Various classes of wealth may be distinguished. Wealth which consists of the earth’s surface is called land; any fixed structures upon it, land improvements; and the two together, constituting immovable wealth, real estate. All wealth which is movable (except man himself) we shall call commodities. A third group includes human beings — not only slaves who are owned by other human beings, but also freemen who are their own masters. It is true that freemen are not ordinarily counted as wealth; and, indeed, they are a very peculiar form of wealth, for various reasons: first, because they are not, like ordinary wealth, bought and sold; secondly, because the owner usually estimates his own importance so much more highly than any one else; and finally, because the owner and the thing owned in this case coincide. Yet they are, like other wealth, “material” and “owned.” These attributes, and others which depend on them, justify? the inclusion of man as wealth. But in order to concede as much as possible to popular usage, the following supple- mentary definition is framed: By wealth (in its more restricted sense) we mean material objects owned by man and external to the owner. This definition obviously includes slaves, but not freemen. But it is more difficult of appli- cation than the wider definition first given, as it requires ! New Principles of Political Economy, recently reprinted under the title Sociological Theory of Capital, Macmillan, 1905. 2 Among those writers who have included man in the category of wealth are Davenant, Petty, Canard, Say, McCulloch, Roscher, Witt- stein, Walras, Engel, Weiss, Dargun, Ofner, Nicholson, and Pareto.

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