Essentials of Economic Theory: As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public PolicyClark, John Bates
General
Essentials of Economic Theory: As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy
Clark, John Bates
Economics
then, exist for thinking that the growth of capital will never end or
check further growth. There are still further facts, however, which
have a bearing on this problem.
_The Importance of the Character of the Increases which are the
Largest Sources of Accumulation._--If one has a doubt whether the
large sums which enter into the capital which is steadily accumulating
are saved under the influence of a desire to maintain a standard, this
doubt will be removed by a consideration of the source from which
great accumulations come. They come most largely from the net profits
of the _entrepreneur_. Next to that they come from the earnings of
what must be classed as labor, though much of it is labor of a special
and very superior sort. The salary which the head of a corporation
receives, the fees that its lawyers get, the fees that come to eminent
surgeons or engineers, are all payments for labor; and these, taken
together with the earnings of well-paid artisans, successful farmers,
and very many others, constitute the second contribution to
accumulating capital. Savings from simple interest itself constitute
the third contribution.[1]
[1] Gains which come from holding land which rises in value
more rapidly than the interest on the price of it
accumulates, is to be rated as part of net _entrepreneur's_
profits.
Now, of these sources of income, net profits and the wages of superior
labor are transient, and the profits are particularly so. The man
whose mill earns fifty per cent in a particular year would be foolish
in the last degree if he used all that as income. That would mean
brief and riotous enjoyment, followed by a most painful fall from the
standard so established. He will naturally spend some part of the
phenomenal dividend and lay aside enough of it to afford a guarantee
that his future income will not fall below the present one. The man
who during the best years of his working life enjoys a salary or
professional fees amounting to a hundred thousand dollars a year would
be almost equally foolish if he were to spend it all as he earns it,
leaving his family unprovided for and his own later years exposed to
the pains of sharp retrenchment. Transient incomes suggest to every
one who has any degree of reason the need of establishing and
maintaining some future standard of living, and of investing enough to
accomplish this. This is more true, of course, when the rate of
interest is low.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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