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
1. _The value of consumption goods is derived from the pleasurable
psychic impressions which they aid to produce, and these psychic effects
constitute the psychic income._ The objective income is sometimes called
the "real" income, but certainly it is not income in the most essential
sense. Things outside of men cannot be feelings, they can only call out
or occasion feeling, and it is the attainment of pleasurable conditions
in mind or soul that is the aim of all economic activity. Material
income and immaterial income are both related to and reducible to
psychic income. Some portions at least of the objective incomes of goods
are continually by use becoming subjective incomes of enjoyment. Men
talk of material income as consisting of bushels of wheat, head of
cattle, etc., and of immaterial income as the uses that durable goods
yield directly or that men perform for each other, _e.g._, those of the
singer, physician, teacher, judge--all services that do not take on
material form. There was a long-standing dispute in economic literature
regarding the difference between productive and unproductive labor.
Productive labor was said to be that which embodied itself in abiding
material form. The distinction led to some peculiar puzzles and
paradoxes. The bartender mixing drinks, adds to the value of those
ingredients; in a minute that value is dissipated. According to the
distinction in question, he is a productive laborer because his services
are embodied in material form, whereas the lecturer is regarded as an
unproductive laborer because the results of his labor are not embodied
in material form. But whether or not the service has for a moment
embodied itself in material form is of no essential economic import. The
presence of the waiter is as essential to the well-served dinner as are
the polished silver and china, or as the well-cooked food. The
distinction in question is not now made by economists, all labor that
contributes to value being regarded as productive. But a similar
distinction is inconsistently preserved by many writers in the case of
material things. A building used as a factory is called productive, but
used by the owner as a dwelling it is called unproductive because the
service it renders does not appear in material form. But the use of the
house, or that of land for a school ground or campus, secures a certain
gratification, an immaterial good. Consistency requires that the
services of men and the use of material things be judged by their
psychic results, the question whether the service takes on a material or
an immaterial form being disregarded.
[Sidenote: All wealth is logically related to psychic income]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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