Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
With profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing to do. We want to
find what it is that determines the division of their joint produce
between land, labor, and capital; and profits is not a term that
refers exclusively to any one of these three divisions. Of the three
parts into which profits are divided by political economists—namely,
compensation for risk, wages of superintendence, and return for the use
of capital—the latter falls under the term interest, which includes
all the returns for the use of capital, and excludes everything else;
wages of superintendence falls under the term wages, which includes
all returns for human exertion, and excludes everything else; and
compensation for risk has no place whatever, as risk is eliminated
when all the transactions of a community are taken together. I shall,
therefore, consistently with the definitions of political economists,
use the term interest as signifying that part of the produce which
goes to capital.
To recapitulate:
Land, labor, and capital are the factors of production. The term land
includes all natural opportunities or forces; the term labor, all human
exertion; and the term capital, all wealth used to produce more wealth.
In returns to these three factors is the whole produce distributed.
That part which goes to land owners as payment for the use of natural
opportunities is called rent; that part which constitutes the reward
of human exertion is called wages; and that part which constitutes the
return for the use of capital is called interest. These terms mutually
exclude each other. The income of any individual may be made up from
any one, two, or all three of these sources; but in the effort to
discover the laws of distribution we must keep them separate.
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