Principles of Economics

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a mistake. In the interests of the general welfare, nothing can be more desirable than that labour should become ever more productiva If this desire were realised, one of three things would happen. Either all prices would keep falling; that is, the necessaries of life and everything else would get cheaper...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a mistake. In the interests of the general welfare, nothing can be more desirable than that labour should become ever more productiva If this desire were realised, one of three things would happen. Either all prices would keep falling; that is, the necessaries of life and everything else would get cheaper and cheaper, and consequently would fall more and more within the reach of all who had previously to deny themselves many things. Or, prices would remain unchanged, bub all money-incomes would keep on increasing, which would have the same result so far as the general welfare was concerned; although persons in receipt of fixed incomes would not share in the improved conditions. Or, lastly, both of these things would happen together: prices would fall and money-incomes would rise at the same time. In which of these three forms the effects of the increased productivity of labour would manifest themselves, would depend upon the growth of the production of bullion. What has already been said1 as to the form which changes in wages will assume is equally applicable here. 3 What is meant by Production Now that the importance of our subject has been made clear, we must examine the subject itself more closely. The question, what should and what should not be regarded as production, requires more elucidation than would appear at first sight. To the Physiocrats is due the credit of having been the first to attempt a definition of the word production in the economic sense. Even as it may be said of the Physiocrats generally, that their merit has consisted in directing attention to important points of investigation, so in this particular case. But in regard to this as well as to most other subjects, their services have amounted to little more. Their conception of production is too ...