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
The most conspicuous method yet suggested for realizing such a Value
level takes the specific form of a proposal to determine Money
standards by frequent comparisons with the Price level of simple types
of Wealth. Resting nominally upon the Value in Trade of such staples,
this method rests fundamentally upon the Economic fact that Labor, as
the continuous producer of all Wealth, is the real source and regulator
at all times of all Values in the channels of Trade, and that Money is
the measuring rod and its terms the language.
To go farther into this Economic field would necessitate a surface
survey of Economic intricacies, and these pages aim only at clarifying
fundamentals. Having returned from the Basic Facts, upon which all
Economic details rest, to the Money surface with which it began, our
common-sense primer for advanced students is at the end of its task.
SEVENTH LESSON
REVIEW
The science of Economics, having now been traced from its surface to
its three Basic Facts and back to the surface, let us, for the purpose
of bringing the whole subject compactly within its narrowest limits,
retrace our steps briskly but thoughtfully by way of review.
Economic accomplishments are measured by Money standards and expressed
in Money terms. Resting on the surface, those standards and terms
spread over the whole Economic area.
Beneath that surface we first find Trade, for which Money is the medium
or the means of expressing relative values and adjusting balances.
Trade consists essentially in interchanges of commodities, inclusive
of natural resources and of human service. It is not an arbitrary
custom or set of customs, but a phenomenon of natural law through which
artificial objects are produced to completion and final delivery. But
Trade, though lying beneath the Money surface of Economics, is not a
basic fact of that science.
Only by piercing through the Trade surface as well as the Money
surface, can the bottom level of the Basic Facts of Economics be
reached. Those facts consist of distinct categories which comprehend
in generalized forms the myriads of miscellaneous facts with which the
Science of Economics is concerned.
Of those categories or Basic Facts there are in number neither more nor
less than three--Man, Natural Resources, Artificial Objects.
All Artificial Objects are produced by Man from and upon Natural
Resources. The technical term for the activities of Man in that
connection is _Labor_; for Natural Resources, _Land_; and for
Artificial Objects, _Wealth_. In technical Economic terms, therefore,
all Wealth is produced from and upon Land by Labor.
Many colloquial and business subdivisions of those three categories may
be useful provided they be not mixed in their meanings.
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