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

Sc. 8] PROPERTY . 33 that “credit” forms an exception, for credit is a present right to a future payment. But it is impossible to have a right to any future wealth which is not also a right to some present wealth as a means of securing that future wealth. The right to next year’s fruit is a right to or in present fruit trees. The right to next year’s wheat is a right to or in the present farm, farmer, and farm implements. The right to receive a future chair or table yet unmade is the right to or in the present person, tools, and other wealth of the car- penter, which are the means by which that chair or table is to be secured. To own a note falling due next year is a part right in the person and other “assets” of the prom- isor, and ceases to have value as soon as he ceases to be “good for it.” The courts do not restrict a debtor in the disposition of his possessions prior to the maturity of a note. He may elect to squander these, and even to commit sui- cide. But such destruction of the present means of pro- viding for future payment carries with it the impairment or destruction of the value of the note. No future com- modities or benefits whatever can be owned in the present except as claims on certain requisites of their production now in existence. We cannot own next year’s goods sus- pended in mid air, as it were, any more than we can fly a kite without a cord. There must always be some present means of controlling the future. Thus, credit, like every other property right, is a part right upon existing wealth. And not only is every right to a future benefit a claim on present wealth, but conversely, every claim on present wealth is a right to a future benefit. Owning rights to “futures” is therefore not an exceptional case, but the gen- eral one. As we have seen, all wealth is merely existing means toward future services, and all property, merely pres- ent rights to some of those future services. It is only through the future services that wealth and property are bound together at all. The sequence of ideas is, first, pres- ent wealth ; second, future services; third, present rights to D

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