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

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Introduction. Fundamental concepts

Collection:: Economics Books

46 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuar. III marginal desirability of the windows is the desirability of the fiftieth window, or the difference in the desirability of having fifty windows rather than forty-nine. §5 The first principle in regard to marginal desirability is that an increase in the quantity of goods in the group the marginal desirability of which is under consideration, results in a decrease in the marginal desirability of the group. Each successive increment is less desirable than the preceding increment. The marginal desirability of sugar to the householder consuming five pounds weekly is greater than the marginal desirability if six pounds are con- sumed, and is successively diminished as each successive pound is added to his consumption. It is well to remember that when the term “successively” is here employed, it is not used in a temporal sense. The succession to which it refers is not a succession in time, but a succession in thought. We consider the consumer of sugar under a series of different hypotheses which we examine successively. We begin with the hypothesis of a weekly consumption of five pounds, and take up succes- sively the hypotheses of six pounds, seven pounds, eight pounds, ete. The desirability of the “last” pound in this series is the marginal desirability for the group ending at that point; but the “last” pound refers to the one consid- ered last in our mental review, and not the one acquired last by the consumer. This fact needs to be emphasized, in view of frequent confusion on the subject occasioned by too Joose an employment of the words “last” and “ successive.” It is presumably because of the time confusions involved in these words that, under the leadership of Wieser® and Marshall? economists have substituted the phrase ‘“mar- ginal utility” for the older phrase of Jevons, “final utility.” With these provisos and explanations in view, it is clear Ursprung des Werthes, p. 128. ? Principles of Economics, 3d ed., 1895, p. 168.

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