Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/255

 PRINCIPLES OF FINANOE 948 is the difficulty of determining what are "conven- tional necessaries". This difficulty has been removed in has an indirect manner, observed that the however, by conventional those to Iarshall, who necessaries are obtain hieh "the average man and woman some other will sacrifice efficiency". In things words, wlfich people which although it are really have so absolute necessaries health and efficiency, t for certain conventional ways of living, customary in their station of life, and pleasant-at the moment of consumption, the absolute necessaries necessaries, thereby health and efficiency. are necessary for is only the essential to great a desire which are often also that they will rathe than causing some Hence an in- forego some of the conventional injury to their ome with 8aFle8 family to say, which is not sufficient to provide a family the conventional as well as the absolute neees- will tend to keep the working meanbets of the below the level of normal efficiency--that is the most common standard of efficiency amongst healthy persons in the cormtry at the time. The question whether it is possible to measure the efficiency of the workers of a population and discover whether there is any falling off as a resnit of taxa- tion does not necessarily arise. The principle limiting the total taxation so that, if evenly distributed according to the ability to pay, it will not 1owex the efciency of workers, gives us a theoretical limit to the taxable capacity which is theoretically sound, because if the taxation were further increased there would be an actual diminution of social income. We thus see. that the taxable capacity of a com- munity means the extent to which the total social income can be' diverted by he force o! the law into' the coffers ot the Governmen without rducing the