Valuation, depreciation and the rate base

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 174667931X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-119897

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Grunsky, Carl Ewald http://d-nb.info/gnd/10180959X

Title:: Valuation, depreciation and the rate base

Edition:: 2. ed., revised and extended

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Wiley

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: X, 500 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XIV. The standard of value

Collection:: Economics Books

THE STANDARD OF VALUE 271 To illustrate: In the first six months of 1919 the dollar in the United States was worth on an average only forty-three per cent as much as during the ten-year period, at the beginning of this century, 1900 to 1909. This statement applies to the gold dollar, its value being measured by the amount of the multipli- city of things (in proportion to their consumption by the nation) which it will buy. This great fall in value was due to the new economic conditions resulting from the war, such as inflation of currency, war debts and high taxation. The bond holder had sacrificed at that time, if measured in the desirable things which money will buy, more than one-half of that portion of his wealth which he held in long-time credits. But he was not the only loser. The salaried class had likewise been hard hit during the same period. Salaries, more particularly those of men and women in the public service of school teachers, of post office employees, of firemen, of policemen and public officials and also those of clerks, and of the whole class of salaried professional men — not to forget the clergy — had remained comparatively stationary. It is this salaried class, dependent as they ordi- narily are upon their immediate earnings to meet their family requirements, which had to stint itself. Here was found a real sacrifice with a resultant reduction in the standard of living, temporary to be sure, which was almost universally accepted as a necessary sacrifice for the welfare of the country. The owners of real estate and the wage earners were among those who were least affected in the years during and immediately following the war by the decline of the purchasing power of the dollar. The real estate owner found that property values — measured by the dollar — had gone up, though not perhaps in the same proportion as the value of the dollar had gone down. The wage earner, well organized, kept close watch of the increase of cost of food and other necessities and made demands from time to time for increase of compensation, which to the extent of their reasonableness, gauged by the increased cost of living, he was bound to secure in the long run. He was, moreover, not back- ward in asking for all that circumstances would allow. Statis-

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