Object: The nature of capital and income

Sec. 7] INCOME 113 
goes to the opposite extreme and leaves money income 
out of account altogether. Having found “money income” 
insufficient for their purposes, economists have conceived 
of “real income.” But by making real income consist of 
“enjoyable” elements, they have excluded money income 
altogether. Some of them more or less avowedly retain 
both concepts, but they do not show how to coordinate them 
nor how to include them both under a more general income- 
concept. In their minds the two seem to stand totally dis- 
connected, except that, in a partial and incomplete way, 
real income is thought of as that for which money income 
is spent. 
§ 7 
The ordinary concepts of income fail to conform to any 
consistent scheme whatever. In consequence, among other 
needless distinctions, are those which have been drawn 
between social and individual income. 
Social income has usually been conceived as the “net 
product” of society, — not in the sense of the net difference 
between services and disservices, but in a sense which 
includes commodities. No consistent method of reckoning 
this net product has been furnished. It is clear that we 
cannot include all products. Some are only too evidently 
new capital, such as newly constructed railways, steam- 
ships, tunnels, bridges, and buildings and would not be 
included by most persons in social income. Others must 
certainly be omitted to avoid duplication in our reckoning. 
If we were to include the wheat crop of the farmer, the 
flour of the miller, and the bread of the baker, we would 
be counting the same thing three times over, — once for 
each of three successive processes. Some economists have 
sought to avoid this repetition, either by excluding the pro- 
duction and consumption of raw materials, or, if these are 
included, by not including the whole value of the finished 
product, but only the increment of value over that of the 
raw materials. 
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