Full text: Economic essays

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CLARK'S REFORMULATION OF THE CAPITAL CONCEPT 
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(Incomes) when accruing separately throughout th Si the 
valuation of those same services when discounted and su led up. 
at an instant of time. Capitalization thus does involve a tome 
parison of a financial fund (the single present worth) and a flow 
(a series of future worths) of the very same things, namely, 
valuations of services. Only through the common element, valua- 
tion, do capital as a valuation fund and income as a valuation 
flow become comparable.? 
The text of Fairchild, Furniss and Buck, eminating from Yale, 
starts in the old paths, formally defining capital as a third factor 
of production, produced instruments of production. The tool, the 
indirect agent, seems to be the typical capital in mind in the 
historical survey, and the older definitions are repeated.” “Land, 
labor and capital” are presented in the familiar roles of the three 
factors of production.® But the first time that there is any real 
occasion to use the capital concept, a simple footnote makes 
kindling wood of these museum pieces and the reader is informed 
that “In the present discussion we shall use the term capital 
including land as well as man-made instruments. The term is 
generally so used in discussions of investments.” * Thereafter 
capital appears as a fund of value, an investment fund, expressed 
in terms of dollars. Yet from time to time the discarded notion 
of the difference between land and man-made capital instruments 
is weakly reéchoed.® The treatment of interest and capital seems 
pretty nearly in accord with that of Fisher. 
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8. Other Representative Opinions 
Professor Seligman, a colleague of Clark’s at Columbia, took ° 
an advanced position on the concept of value, as well as on the 
* The thought is hardly to be avoided that some of the peculiar ideas 
regarding savings and income to which Fisher has adhered so uniquely 
despite criticism are traceable to this confusion of definitions. We refer 
especially to his reiterated proposition that “savings are not income.” As 
a financial fact, there can be no saving and addition to capital value until 
there is first a property right to an income calculable in monetary terms 
(a financial present worth) to be saved. Hence to deny that monetary 
savings are monetary income is in simple common sense to deny a faut 
accompli; it is to assume the existence of the effect before its cause. 
* Elementary Economics (1926), Vol 1, p. 32 ff. 
® Idem., p. 40. 
“ Idem., Vol. 1, p. 355. 
* Eg. Vol. 2, pp., 163 and 189. 
® Principles of Economics (1905), see pp. 17, and ch. xiv, p. 204. on “The 
Capitalization of Value.”
	        
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