Читать книгу The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems - Frank A. Fetter - Страница 34

The recurrence of wants

1. Satisfaction and gratification being only temporary conditions, economic wants appear in more or less regularly recurring series. Impressions are short lived, sensations are temporary, wants that have been satisfied recur. Wants recur for the same reason that they first arose. No impression on the nerves or on the senses is lasting. Man's senses were developed for the purpose of bringing him into relation with the outer world, of enabling him to survive in his struggle with the forces of nature. So, when a good has been enjoyed, the utility to that person of that thing or service for that particular moment, falls, it may be even to zero. To keep wants satisfied is impossible; we cannot do next year's reading or next week's eating now; we cannot live the life of to-morrow. The best results in reading or eating come from taking the right amount day by day. But it is a need in the life of men that wants should recur after a time, otherwise there would be no motive for action.

Series of wants and series of goods

2. The economic ideal is that this series of recurring wants should be met by a corresponding series of goods. It is evident that if a series or succession of goods varies, at different times, moments, and conditions, in its power to gratify wants, the closer the correspondence between the two series, that of wants and that of goods, the greater will be the total of gratification. We may liken man's life to a journey in which the supplies of food are gotten at the stations. If any one of these supplies fails, the traveler suffers the pangs of hunger, and if two or three supplies are at one point, they do not serve the needs of man so well as if distributed along the way. This constant inflow of goods is one of the fundamental needs of life. The savage dimly understands this need. Even the birds and the beasts adjust their lives to it either by travel or by toil. The spring and autumn migrations to new feeding grounds are the attempts of the bird to gratify this series of wants as they arise. The ant, the bee, and the squirrel anticipate, and work to fill their storehouses against the days of need.

Social and private incomes

3. Objective income consists of the additional sums of goods acquired by individuals or by society during the income period. The term national or social income may be contrasted with individual or private income in the objective sense. The nature of the acquisition of objective incomes may, in some cases, be different if viewed from the social and individual standpoints. Society, as a whole, may be said to acquire income only when goods are produced; individuals may acquire income by gift, bequest, theft, or other modes of transfer from other individuals. In many cases the two kinds of income, however, agree, the objective income of society being the algebraic sum of the goods acquired or parted with by all the individuals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some goods never can become enjoyable goods

Further, in the economic world there is much wealth that never can gratify any want directly; many forms of wealth never can be consumption goods. It is true that everything called wealth is expected to contribute sooner or later in some way to the sum of gratifications. It is for that reason it is called wealth. It is, however, a mere figure of speech to say indirect want-gratifiers become want-gratifying goods. For example, the engine transporting a load of coal is indirectly gratifying wants; if it is transporting a train-load of passengers, the gratification is direct. A machine making cloth for next year is gratifying wants only in a metaphorical sense. A field used to produce food is not a direct want-gratifier until it is transformed into a residence site, a playground, or a tennis-court.

It is necessary therefore to recognize the distinction between present and future incomes. The value of the mass of wealth in possession and yielding income, rests in large part upon its power of contributing to income in some future period. Thus, any durable good may be looked upon as embodying a series of incomes ranging from present to future in varying degrees. This will be fully considered under the subject of capital.

Income from wealth and from labor

6. Incomes are called funded or unfunded according to the sources from which they are derived. Funded income arises from the possession of wealth or of claims on wealth, such as lands, railroad stocks, government bonds, etc. The income is "funded" because it corresponds to an abiding fund of wealth. The income arising from current labor is unfunded, because there is no permanent fund of accumulated wealth corresponding to it.

The idea of regularity connected with funded income is not essential to the idea of income in general, i.e., we cannot refuse to call a thing income because it occurs only this year. If it is part of the sum of goods that flows in, that is newly available for the man's use, it is income. But funded income is the more abiding, for income from wages stops when the man dies or fails to perform his work, while the income from wealth continues after he ceases to be active. Thus, families with equal incomes may differ greatly in wealth, the one depending entirely on salaries, the other on rents.