SECTION CXLVII.. National Income.--Its Statistical Importance.

NATIONAL INCOME.--ITS STATISTICAL IMPORTANCE. [CONTINUED.]

The question frequently discussed, whether it is more advantageous to increase the gross income or the net income[147-1] of a people, may be readily answered with the assistance of our tripartite division. Since economic production has no other object than the satisfaction of human wants, the mere increase of the gross income of a people is a matter of indifference. An increase of the net income puts a people in a condition to increase either their numbers or their enjoyments. (See §§ 163 and 239.) The most desirable condition is where both these results are produced. It is fortunate for a people when the free income of the nation increases by reason of the absolute or relative decrease of the cost of production, which adds nothing to enjoyment. But it is politically and morally to be lamented when it increases at the expense of the satisfaction of man's necessary wants, especially if the majority of the people deny themselves in this respect to produce that end. Sir Thomas More called the sheep of his time, to make place for which so many farm houses were razed to the ground, ravenous beasts, which devoured men and laid waste city and country.[147-2]

The political and military bearing of this very clearly recognized. (102 ff., éd Daire.) Hence Quesnay, favors it in every way; by large farming instead of small, by stock raising on a large scale, supplanting home labor by cheaper foreign labor, by machinery and the employment of manual labor, etc.; 91 ff., 200 ff., 274 ff. The elder Mirabeau teaches even that the goodness of a government or of a constitution, and even national morality may be inferred from the amount of the produit net. (Ph. rurale, ch. 5.) Stewart, Principles, I, ch. 20. Adam Smith gives greater prominence to the gross income, and grades the principal branches of national labor according as they increase the gross product of the nation's economy. (II, chs. 1, 5.) Similarly, J. B. Say, Traité, ch. 8, § 3; Lauderdale, Inquiry, 142.

Ricardo thoroughly reacts against this view, and considers it a matter of indifference whether a net product (interest on capital and rent) of a given amount be obtained by the labor of five or seven million other men, so long as only five million can live on it. (Principles, ch. 26.) Similarly Ganilh, Systèmes, I, 218 ff.; Théorie, II, 96. Controverted by Malthus, Principles, II, § 6. Buquoy, Theorie der Nat. Wirthsch., 1815, 310 ff. Sismondi has ridiculed this predilection for the net product which in Ricardo corresponds with what the Germans call free product (freien Ertrage), and which, contrary to Ricardo's own opinion, he calls Ricardo's ideal, saying that according to him, nothing more was to be desired but that "the king should remain alone on the island and, by turning a crank forever, do all the work of England through the instrumentality of automata." (N. P., II, 330 ff.) An entire people should value only gross product. (I, 183.) In his Etudes, Essai, II: Du Revenu Social, Sismondi distinguishes as elements of the gross national income: a, pure capital, the return of outlay; b, that which is at once both capital and income, and serves as family support (capital as a necessarily remaining supply, income as the product of the preceding year); c, net income, the excess of production over consumption.

The Socialists of our day would prefer to see the whole net income of a people employed in the satisfaction of the necessary wants of an ever increasing population. By this procedure, as a natural consequence, we should witness first the curtailing of the taxing power, of the funds for the satisfaction of the more refined wants and of the saving of capital, nor would it be long before even the existing generation would experience the bitterness of this "living from hand to mouth." After a time, even the possibility of progress and even of mere increase of population would cease.

Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuch., 297 ff., has better than almost any one else developed the theory of income, and he lays most stress on the satisfaction of wants as the chief aim of public economy. Kröncke, Das Steuerwesen, 1804, 381 ff.; Grundsätze einer gerechten Besteuerung, 1819, 93 f., may be considered the predecessor who prepared the way for him. Compare the profound work of Bernhardi, Versuch einer Kritik der Gründe die für grosses und kleines Grundeigenthum angeführt werden, St. Petersburg, 1848. Many controversies on this subject may be closed by a more accurate understanding as to terms. Thus, for instance, when Rau, Handbuch, embraces in the cost of production the necessary maintenance of material-workmen, and of those engaged in the labor of commerce; or when Jacob, Staatswissenschaft, § 496, and Storch, Einkommen, 116 ff., even the necessary support of every class useful to society, their valuation of the gross national income is in only apparent conflict with our doctrine on the subject.]