The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
It is true that _future_ marginal utilities come into the utility theory
scheme, but they come in, not as future utilities, but as "_present
worths_" of future utilities, or as "present anticipated feelings" in
Jevons' phrase[100] suffering a discount, usually, in the process. But I
am not aware of any writer among the founders of the utility school, who
has sought to bring past utilities into the scheme. The past is dead.
Its effects persist in the present only in present processes. A _memory_
is a _present_ psychological fact.
Consider further. Is it the prices of yesterday that determine the
subjective value of money to an individual, if the prices of yesterday
are different from the prices of to-day, _and the individual knows it_?
In so far as we have the clear, intelligent economic mind, seeking its
interests--and the marginal utility theory assumes this type of
mind--the tendency is to bring all the factors in the problem into the
present. If prices change slowly, so that the individual can count on
essentially the same situation to-day that he had yesterday, doubtless
he will not take the trouble to recast his value system. There is a
tremendous lot of trouble in bringing about, in the individual's mind,
the rational equilibration of values--trouble which the Austrian theory
commonly abstracts from, but which should be recognized in the analysis,
and accorded its own marginal significance in the scale. To throw the
emphasis on inertia, however, and to assume that men do not readjust
their margins to meet changed conditions, is to depart from the
fundamentals of the Austrian theory. If the price-situation is a rapidly
changing one, men do rapidly readjust their estimates of money. If money
is fluctuating rapidly in value--as, say, during a time when there is
depreciated paper money, whose future depends on military events, the
adjustments may be very rapid indeed. I quote the following from the
news columns of the _New York Times_, of April 4, 1914, p. 2: "Jaurez,
Mexico, Apr. 3.--After the hysterical outbursts last night that greeted
the news of the fall of Torreon, this city was preternaturally calm
to-day.... The silent gentleman with the dyed mustache who spins the
marble at the roulette wheel in the Jaurez Monte Carlo, conducted by
Villa's officers for the benefit of the rebel treasury, seemed the only
person who was not excited. When the crowd of players suddenly deserted
him on the sound of the bugle call of victory, he gave the marble
another whirl from sheer force of habit, but none returned.... In an
hour, however, play was faster and more furious than ever, for holders
of Constitutionalist money early realized that their currency had
suddenly increased in value, and that they were somewhat richer than
before." I do not question the fact, however, that men are slow in
making calculations, and that society is often unconscious of changed
conditions, and often readjusts less rapidly than occasion requires.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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