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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part IV. Summaries

Collection:: Economics Books

Sec. 2] GENERAL SUMMARY 325 property signifying merely the sharing of wealth among individuals. When we piece together these shares, we ob- tain the ownership of all wealth. In like manner, the value of the entire mass of wealth must be taken to mean simply the sum of the values of the individual shares of this owner- ship. When we attempt to reach this total by combining the shares of individuals, we do so by making a careful record of all “capital accounts.” In such a record we find that many items occur in pairs, — negative items of property or “liabilities” in one account and positive items or “assets” in another. By this pairing of items, there will be left as the final sum of property value the value of the entire stock of physical instruments. Of the services which flow from the stock of capital, it has been seen that the great majority consist merely of “interactions” between one category of capital and another. All that is accomplished by most instruments of capital is to hand over something to other instruments of capital. The great mass of capital —lands, warehouses, rail- roads, machinery, ships, ete. — exists either for ‘‘transpor- tation,” that is, for changing the position of wealth from one place to another ; or for “production,” that is, for chang- ing wealth from one state or form to another; or finally for exchange, the mutual transfer of rights to wealth. In every such operation, the instruments which have wrought the change are said to have rendered a service; and in the income account these instruments are credited with the value of such services; while the instruments which receive the services, and are thus improved in position or condi- tion, are said to have rendered a disservice and are at the same time debited with exactly the same item. When we thus come to put together the entire total of income, all such pairs of items or “interactions” cancel. These double-faced events or interactions constitute the over- whelming mass of items in the actual inventory of income which enter into the accounts of business men. Out of

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