The basic facts of economics : $b A common-sense primer for advanced studentsPost, Louis F. (Louis Freeland)
General
The basic facts of economics : $b A common-sense primer for advanced students
Post, Louis F. (Louis Freeland)
Economics
Although the old conception of the Margin of Production--“margin of
cultivation,” as it was called--as bounding an open space of free
agricultural land be obsolete, the principle of the Margin remains,
namely, that the better the opportunity to profit by use of any
location on our earth over use of the most profitable location thereon
to be had for nothing, the higher will the Rent of the former be.
That marginal principle will persist so long as some locations are
preferable to others. And in those circumstances Rent will continue
and be allocated with reference to “marginal” or zero-value Land. The
better the opportunity to profit by the use of any location above the
most desirable to be had for nothing, the higher will be the Rent of
the former.
Whether the surplus of Production or possible Production be called
Rent for Land, or deductions from Wages for superior opportunities to
Labor, or be otherwise distinguished from Wages for Labor, it none the
less exists as a distinct and natural allocation of Wealth produced
from and upon Land by Labor. Although Rent depends wholly upon Labor
for its Production it is a differential gain in Wealth which is due
not to superior productiveness of Labor but to relative superiority of
different kinds and locations of Land.
This continuous allocation to Rent of shares of Labor-produced Wealth
may--it constantly does--take on Capitalized forms. As Wealth is
produced it flows toward the productive factors in two distinct and
continuous streams--Wages for Labor and Rent for Land. But as Land
has in business custom the rank of a commodity, the legal right of
its owners to appropriate Rent assumes the form of Capitalized Land
Value. An annual income from Rent, for example, be that income actual
or only potential, may be bought and sold in business intercourse for a
Capital sum or “purchase money.” Commonly it is so sold along with the
legal Land title by which it is secured to the owner, but often with
Artificial improvements, the whole being called “real estate,” as if
the improvements and the Land were fundamentally identical.
As a result, the word “rent” takes on in the customary business sense
a different meaning from the meaning of Rent in the normal Economic
sense. In private business it may mean annual “groundrent,” or annual
house-and-ground “rent”; and when capitalized, all legal rental
rights may be combined in Price or Value. A concurrent custom is the
transformation noted above of Rent for Land into Capital value or
selling Price.
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