SECTION CXLVIII.. The Two Phases of Income.

THE TWO PHASES OF INCOME.

In every income which has anything to do with other incomes, it is necessary to distinguish its immediately productive side, and its profit or acquisition side. It is necessary, in the first place, that all the products made by private parties should, so to speak, be put into the common treasury of the national economy, and that each should thence draw his own private revenue. Justice requires that there should be a perfect correlation between the two; that each should enjoy precisely the quota of the national income to the production of which his person or his property contributed. A just appreciation of the relative productive power of the divers branches of labor constitutes one of the chief bulwarks against the inroads of destructive socialistic theories. The person who calls a good doctor or a good judge unproductive should, to be consistent, call those who by their greater intelligence are fitted to superintend agricultural and industrial enterprises unproductive, also, as is done by the coarser socialists with their apotheosis of mere manual labor. Unfortunately, such a settlement as is above contemplated among the different factors of production, whose owners are desirous to divide the common product among them, is possible only where the factors of production are either of the same kind, or can be reduced to a common denominator.[148-1] But if justice pure and simple were meted out, no man could subsist. Love or charity must supplement justice in order to assist those (and especially such as without any fault of theirs) who are not able to produce anything, or enough to supply those wants, for instance, children and the poor.

As the net national income, following the three great factors of all economic production, is divided into three great branches, rent, wages and interest on capital, the net income from any private business may be reduced to one or more of these branches.[148-2] The three great branches of income may be considered with advantage from a great many different points of view. We may inquire in the case of each of them: concerning its absolute magnitude, its relation to the aggregate national income, to the magnitude of the factor of production, of which it constitutes the remuneration; by what number of men it is shared, and what number of wants it satisfies.[148-3] Lastly, the difference between the amount stipulated for, and the original amount of both rent and wages, as well as the interest of capital, is of special importance. The former consists in the price paid by the borrower for the use of the factor of production to the owner; the latter in the immediate products which the employment of the same productive power brings on one's own account. Evidently, the original amount is, in the long run, the chief element in the determination of the stipulated amount. While the former depends more on the deeper and more durably effective elements of price, especially the cost of production, the value in use and the paying capacity of purchasers; the latter is conditioned more by the superficial variations of supply and demand, and even by custom. For our purposes, the former is by far the more important, but, at the same time, by far the more difficult to perceive.