EXCESS  OF  CAPITAL  AND  “UNEARNED”  INCOMES  g  I
members  of  the  community.  My  point  is  simply  this,
that  a  large  proportion  of  “  new  capital  ”  does  not  represent
“saving”  due  to  painful  abstinence,  careful  postponement
of  present  to  future  use,  but  represents  the  merely
automatic  accumulation  of  an  idle  surplus  of  income  after
all  genuine  and  wholesome  needs  are  fully  satisfied.
Where  incomes  flow  in,  yielding  a  power  of  consumption
wholly  disproportionate  to  the  output  of  personal  effort,
a  natural  tendency  to  “  save  ”  is  manifested,  which  is
sharply  distinguishable  from  the  reasonable  “  saving  ”
made  out  of  legitimate  earnings.  It  is  this  automatic
“saving”  which  upsets  the  balance  between  consumption
and  producing-power,  and  which  from  the  social  standpoint
may  be  classed  as  “over-saving.”  No  class  of  men  whose
“savings”  are  made  out  of  their  hard-won  earnings  is
likely  to  oversave,  for  each  unit  of  “  capital  ”  will  represent
a  real  want,  a  piece  of  legitimate  consumption  deferred.
But  where  “savings”  represent  the  top  portion  of  large
incomes,  drawn  from  economic  rents  of  land,  profits  of
speculation,  high  interest  of  capital  derived  from  monopolies,
no  natural  limit  is  set  upon  the  amount  which  is  saved.
§  25.  Excess  of  Capital  a  Result  of
“  Unearned  ”  Incomes.
If  this  reasoning  is  correct,  the  over-capitalisation  which
is  found  to  exist  is  identified  with  those  elements  of
individual  incomes  which  are  unearned  in  the  sense  that
their  “incoming”  is  not  attended  by  any  corresponding
“  outgoing  ”  of  effort  on  the  part  of  the  recipient.  This
is  no  doubt  largely  an  à  priori  argument,  but  it  contains
the  only  hypothesis  which  serves  to  explain  the  facts.
This  hypothesis  may  be  formally  summarised  in  the