Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/378

 37a THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

under present conditions, succeed in appropriating wealth that is the product of another kind of skill. If it is true that men are justified in having what they can get with the help of their brains, then the masses would be justified in having the wealth the rich now have, if they could get it from them.

The idea that interest is the reward for postponed consumption is as incongruous as the idea that it is the reward for abstinence. If I postpone consumption now I must indulge it later, for otherwise it is not postponement, but relinquishment. It follows that in any consid- erable period of time there can be no outstanding postponement, for the postponement of some will be neutralized by others who are vindicating their postponement by consuming. No man can be said to postpone to the extent that he leaves the world with wealth to his credit, for that is relinquishment. But the national wealth is increasing. The per capita wealth in 1850 was about $300, and now it is $2,200.^^ It means that the net saving has not come about through postponement, but through lifetime relinquishment. From the point of view of the nation we might call it postponement, but not from the point of view of the individual.

Unlike production and consumption, these things — saving, absti- nence, postponemen{^-«re mere negatives, each is merely a not doing. They are induced solely for the purpose of fostering their opposite, which is consumption, the reality. A social science that bases its defi- nitions on such abstractions must be illusive. Saving is xmdertaken for the sole purpose of furthering spending. If abstinence is under- taken for any other reason than to promote indulgence, then abstinence becomes insanity. If postponement is not vindicated, then it is not postponement. To this list should be added scarcity, a thing that — if we may call it a thing — ^has been responsible for profound confusion in economic thought.

The incomes we are discussing are, of course, real incomes, and these do not always appear in the prevalent method of bookkeeping and accounting. Thus, when a farmer produces food directly for his own consxmiption as well as for the market, the value of the food that he takes from his garden to his table will not appear as a part of his money income. But such value should be added to his money income to obtain his real income. The same can be said of value added by the labor of the housewife, and in fact of all wealth which is never appraised because it never gets into the circle of exchanges where relative values are measured by the standard monetary unit.

The distinction between property and service incomes, while usually apparent, is not always so. It is plain that dividends, interest and rent

10 In spite of the fact that currency prices of standard commodities feU about 44 per cent, between 1866 and 1896, prices in 1911 were at about the same level as prices in 1850. The above figures are therefore comparable.

�� �