The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical ProblemsFetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
General
The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems
Fetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
Economics
We should not understand that either social or private objective incomes
include only material goods, for many utilities and labor services that
never take on a material or money expression are included in either
case. Indeed, we are close here to the conception of psychic income
which is to be developed more fully.
[Sidenote: Money income]
Income of money is not often the same as income of things. Usually many
of these subtler utilities are overlooked and omitted from the
recognized money income. In this day the use of money is so common that
we are sometimes led to ignore the value of things to which the money
expression is not given. The money income is merely the money
expression of the value of currently acquired goods, and it is the only
medium through which such varied sources of gratification can be
compared.
[Sidenote: Gross and net income]
4. _Income in the logical sense must be a net addition, but the term
gross income is not without popular and practical meaning._ Gross income
is sometimes spoken of in the sense of total receipts, as the total of
goods secured; net income is the remainder after deducting expenditures
and after replacing the goods employed to secure the income. In order to
produce some goods technically, men make use of other goods. While they
are storing up a supply of wood or coal it may be looked upon as the
income, but they may burn it to help grow hothouse plants. While they
gather flowers with one hand, they destroy fuel with the other. Only the
net increase in value can be accounted income in the second period. The
goods that come into a man's possession in any period are of many sorts:
to get some he has destroyed many previously existing goods; while to
get others he has not needed to use up the accumulations of the past or
to mortgage the future. The one kind is gross, the other net income.
[Sidenote: Wealth and income]
5. _An income of consumption goods is a part of wealth, but not the
whole of it._ The consumption goods, the "present goods" at the moment
available, are the essential part of wealth for the moment's enjoyment.
The only essential and immediate conditions of a series of
gratifications is a regular series of consumption goods. But many things
existing which could be used to secure a gratification are not in fact
treated as consumption goods. A crop of corn is not all income. In a
time of famine it could be used, but seed-corn was saved from last year,
and some must be kept for next year. This is a part of wealth, but not
of "present goods" as we understand the term.
[Sidenote: Some goods never can become enjoyable goods]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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