The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
Another way of reaching the same conclusion is to say that an increase
in demand in the active sense will lead to an increase in supply only if
there be no corresponding increase in demand for the alternative
employments of the sources of that supply, that, _e. g._, an increased
demand for wheat will lead to increased production of wheat only if
there be not a corresponding increase in the demands for corn and other
crops which can be raised on land and with labor and capital that would
otherwise produce wheat. This is only another phase of the argument that
went before, that an increase in demand due to a falling value of money
would lead to a corresponding shift in the supply-curve. It is not quite
the same argument, however, because that was an argument concerned with
short run tendencies, resting on the assumption that the holders of
supply would immediately react to a change in the value of money,
whereas the argument just presented rests on the longer adjustments,
based on the law of costs, as worked out by the Austrians. This point
will be made clearer in the next chapter.
Yet another, and perhaps simpler, approach to the same conclusion is by
pointing out that an individual, deciding to buy, must take account of
the prices of other things in his budget--that individual
demand-schedules would be different if market prices of other
things--which depend on the value of money--were different.
The doctrine that supply and demand (and cost of production, the
capitalization theory, and other elements in the current price-analysis)
presuppose a fixed value of money, must be sharply distinguished from
the doctrine of Professor Fisher (_Purchasing Power of Money_, ch. 8),
and others, that a fixed _general price level_ is assumed by supply and
demand, etc. I should deny that a fixed general price level is assumed.
The point rests in the distinction between value as _absolute_ and value
as _relative_. For my theory, it is perfectly possible for the general
price level to rise, with the value of money constant, because of a rise
in the values of _goods_. In a later chapter, on "The Passiveness of
Prices," I shall examine the doctrine of Professor Fisher more closely,
and set these two views in clearer contrast. For the present, it is
enough to point out one vital difference between a rise in prices due to
a fall in the value of money and a rise in prices due to a rise in the
values of goods, with the absolute value of money unchanged: in the
latter case, there is an increase in the psychological stimulus to
industry, an increase in economic power in motivation, which energizes
and increases production. In the latter case, especially when the fall
in the value of money is rapid, and the rise in prices is clearly due to
that cause (as in the case of Confederate paper, or the French
_Assignats_), we find a reverse effect on industry. Intermediate cases,
where money is falling in value, but where goods are also rising, give
us intermediate results.
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