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

Wo IPO Gr FI RRO ITS I RRR RRR 8 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Crap I § 3 In the definition of wealth were included two attributes: wealth is material; and, it is owned. These attributes, materiality and appropriation, need to be considered sepa- rately. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to the former. An important and useful result of the materiality of wealth is that it provides a basis for the physical measure- ment of wealth. Wealth is of many kinds, and each kind is measured in its own proper physical unit. These units have been handed down to us from various sources and in great diversity, but all of them are in the last analysis arbitrary. Many kinds of wealth are measured by weight-uniis. This is true of coal, iron, beef, and in fact, of most “commodities.” Each unit consists of the weight of some particular piece of matter which is adopted for con- venience as a standard. For instance, the English pound is simply a lump of platinum kept in London and called ar- bitrarily the pound. Many articles are not so conveniently measured by weight-units as by space-units, whether of volume, area, or length. Thus we have, for volume, milk measured by the quart, wheat by the bushel, wood by the cord, and gas by the cubic foot ; for areas, we have lumber sold by the square foot and land by the acre; for length, we have rope, wire, ribbons, and cloth measured in feet and yards. All these units of length, area, and volume are also quite arbitrary or conventional. The definition of the English yard, for instance, is an imaginary line drawn between two small dots on gold plugs in a particular brass rod in London. Many articles exist in more or less definite units which need only to be counted, as for instance, eggs or oranges, which are measured by the dozen. Similarly, writing paper is reckoned by the quire; pencils and screws by the gross.

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