[Governments] can create capital. They may lay on taxes, and employ the amount productively. They may do what is nearly equivalent: they may lay taxes on income or expenditure, and apply the proceeds toward paying off the public debts. The fund-holder, when paid off, would still desire to draw an income from his property, most of which, therefore, would find its way into productive employment, while a great part of it would have been drawn from the fund for unproductive expenditure, since people do not wholly pay their taxes from what they would have saved, but partly, if not chiefly, from what they would have spent. § 2. Increase of Capital gives Increased Employment to Labor, Without Assignable Bounds. While, on the one hand, industry is limited by capital, so, on the other, every increase of capital gives, or is capable of giving, additional employment to industry; and this without assignable limit. I do not mean to deny that the capital, or part of it, may be so employed as not to support laborers, being fixed in machinery, buildings, improvement of land, and the like. In any large increase of capital a considerable portion will generally be thus employed, and will only co-operate with laborers, not maintain them. It will be remembered, however, that subsistence is but one part or element of capital; that instruments and materials form a large part of capital. But still the question of mere maintenance is rightfully discussed, because it is asserted to-day that, while the rich are growing richer, the poor lack even the food to keep them alive; and throughout this discussion Mr. Mill has in view the fact that laborers may exist in the community either “half fed or unemployed.” What I do intend to assert is, that the portion which is destined to their maintenance may (supposing no alteration in anything else) be indefinitely increased, without creating an impossibility of finding the employment: in other words, that if there are human beings capable of work, and food to feed them, they may always be employed in producing something. It is very much opposed to common doctrines.(106) There is not an opinion more general among mankind than this, that the unproductive expenditure of the rich is necessary to the employment of the poor.