Finally, if full compensation were offered it would have to take the form of government obligations, securities, or bonds. If these did not bear interest the great majority of capital owners would regard the scheme as partial and considerable confiscation, and would fight it with determination and effectiveness. If the State bound itself to pay interest on the bonds it would probably find itself giving the dispossessed capitalists as high a rate of return on their capital, as large a share of the national product, as they receive under the present system. Consequently, the expropriation of the capitalists would bring no direct and pecuniary gain to the labouring classes. Indeed, the latter would suffer positive loss by the change, owing to the fact that the State would be required to withdraw from the national product a considerable amount for the maintenance, renewal, and expansion of the instruments of production. At present the capitalist class performs the greater part of this function through the reinvestment of the incomes that it receives in the form of interest and rent. The average Socialist entirely ignores this capitalistic service, when he draws his pessimistic picture of the vast share of the national product which now goes to "idle capitalists." So far as the larger capitalist incomes are concerned; that is, those in excess of twenty-five thousand dollars annually, it is probable that the greater part is not consumed by the receivers, but is converted into socially necessary capital instruments. Since this would not be permitted in a Socialist order, the capitalists would strive to consume the whole of the incomes received from the public securities, and the State would be compelled to provide the required new capital out of the current national product. In a word, society would have to give the capitalists as much as it does at present, and to withhold from the labourers for new capital an immense sum which is now furnished by the capitalists. It is undoubtedly true that the richest capitalists would be unable to expend the whole of their incomes upon themselves and their families. If they turned a considerable part of it over to the State, the surrendered sum would be available as capital, thereby reducing the amount that the State would need to take out of the national product for this purpose. Were all those possessing incomes in excess of fifty thousand dollars per family to give up all above that amount, the total thus accruing to the State would be a little more than one billion dollars.[128] But this would be only one-half the required new capital. A part of the additional one billion is now provided out of wages and salaries, but the greater part probably comes out of rent and interest. Under Socialism this latter portion would have to be deducted from that part of the national product which at present goes to the workers and is consumed by them. Hence they would undergo a loss of several hundred million dollars.