3. _The employer in hiring labor and producing goods takes account of these time differences._ In the preceding paragraph has been noted the influence of time differences in the simplest problem of economic wages. Interest is likewise taken account of in the bargains between workman and employer, by which contract wages are fixed. The employer of labor works subject to a prevailing rate of interest. If he ignores it he must lose. He should direct a given amount of labor to products that mature next year only when their expected selling price is greater than that of products that can be marketed this year. This difference due to time can no more be ignored than can any other difference in the cost of products. If the employer keeps the future goods to sell later, they will normally increase in value as they approach maturity; if he markets the goods at once, he normally must pass on to the purchaser the benefit of the discount he has made on their future value. That is to say, it is not the employer of labor, the purchaser of labor as such, who gains by discounting the future value of labor; it is the investor of capital (whether employer or later purchaser) who secures the rent as it matures. [Sidenote: The discount of the future value of services is inevitable] 4. _Hence all wages paid for help on products that are remote are based on the present worth, or discounted value, of the future gratification to which the labor contributes._ The idea is held in one form or another by all radical socialistic writers, that the laborer does not get the full value of his products. In the sense that is here discussed, he does not. He does not get what the product will sell for in the future. He gets the probable future value at its present worth, discounted at the prevailing rate. That part of the employer's gains corresponding to this discount on labor is economic time-value. Nor is this discount of future services dependent on a political system or on private property or on the wage system, as some have assumed. It is a universal truth. It is in the nature of wants that present and future should differ. A communistic or socialistic state would have to take account of this difference, else the whole social economy would be irrational and there would be no principle by which to apportion in time the productive forces of the community. Contracts to pay interest and contracts to pay wages might be forbidden and made criminal by formal law, but time-value would persist. [Sidenote: Relations of wages, rent, and time-value]