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:: Part I. Capital

Collection:: Economics Books

58 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Curae IV line to be drawn? Are we to say, for instance, that capital is that wealth whose use extends beyond seventeen days? And as all wealth is for future use it is also, by the same token, all a “reserve.” To call capital a reserve does not, therefore, in strictness, delimit it from other wealth. Even a beggar’s crust in his pocket will tide him over a few hours.! Equally futile is any attempt definitely to mark off capital as that wealth which is “productive.” We have seen that all wealth is productive in the sense that it yields services. There was a time when the question was hotly debated what labor was productive and what unproductive. The distinction was barren and came to be so recognized. No one now objects to calling all labor productive. And if this productivity is common to all labor, it is equally common to all wealth. If we admit that a private coach- man is a productive worker, how can we deny that the horse and carriage are also productive, especially as the three merely cooperate in rendering the very same service, — transportation ? Finally, we cannot distinguish capital as that wealth which bears income. All wealth bears income, for income consists simply of the services of wealth. But the idea that some wealth bears income and some not has been per- sistent from the time of Adam Smith, who, meaning by in- come only money income, conceived capital as the wealth which produces income in this sense, as distinguished from the wealth, such as dwellings, equipages, clothing, and food, which dissipates that income. A home, according to him, is not a source of income, but of expense, and therefore can- not be capital. § 4 In these and other ways have economists introduced, in place of the fundamental distinctions between fund and flow, and between wealth and services, the merely relative dis- ! See the writer's “Precedents for Defining Capital,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1904, p. 404.

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