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
What counts in Economic measurements is Money denominations--Money
language rather than Money pieces. For in the world-wide processes of
trade, only a slight proportion of either metal coin or paper currency
passes from hand to hand. Nearly all Money measurements are entered in
books of account; and in these the debits and the credits so nearly
offset one another, by and large, that the difference as a whole is
too slight for consideration in passing down from the Money surface of
Economics to the basic facts. A common and impressive exemplification
is afforded by clearinghouse statistics. These show that the enormous
banking transactions in Money terms which merge at the clearings daily,
are balanced off with a trifling percentage of tangible Money.
Let the fact be emphasized then, that in defining Money as the medium
of trade, Money terms rather than Money forms are to be understood as
the trading medium.
When a customer at a retail store buys a supply of groceries, his
payment may be made in Money pieces, either metal or paper. Yet it
may be made instead with a check drawn against his bank balance, or
through a charge to his account in the retailer’s books. If paid in
Money pieces, either at the time of purchase or later, some if not all
of those pieces will go to the storekeeper’s bank and be credited to
him in Money terms on the books of the bank. If the payment be made by
check, the amount of the check will be entered in the storekeeper’s
bank account as if it were a payment in Money pieces instead of Money
terms. Be such transactions as they may, however,--cash payments or
check payments or drafts or promissory notes--tangible Money plays on
the whole but a small part.
From purchases by customers at retail stores back to wholesalers;
back of wholesalers to manufacturers of finished products and
of unfinished products and of tools and of every other kind of
merchantable object; back to land-owners for the sources of supply and
the sites for production and delivery; back to farmers, to miners,
to transportation agencies, to a vast though scattered army of
wage-workers; through many a complicated series of accounts at stores,
factories, mines, real-estate offices, railway and steamship offices,
banks, clearinghouses--must we wend our way if we would investigate
the processes of trade in detail. Yet only in slight degree do those
processes involve the use of Money forms. Though coinage standards play
their part, almost all trading transactions are made in Money terms and
not with Money pieces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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