Income level

“ As we have already noticed, the £160 line at which assessment to income tax begins, divides the national income into two almost equal parts. Those persons who have more than £160 per annum enjoy an aggregate income of £909,000,000. Those persons who have less than £160 per annum enjoy an aggregate income of £935,000,000. ”

“ Another striking fact shown by the table is the large proportion of persons receiving incomes of less than $214 a year, the minimum taxable income. It shows the poverty of the mass of the people as well as the concentration of wealth among the few rich. ”

“ It has taken a largely increasing share of the national income, which of course has been at the expense of other classes of people. This is true of every industry wherein the index of wages is higher than the general economic index unless there has been an offsetting increase in the efficiency of the labor. ”

“ The average income per head in this country of that class—composed mainly of wage-earners—which does not pay income tax has, in terms of money, nearly trebled itself during the present century; its purchasing power has increased in a yet larger ratio, and its increase will be found to have been most rapid and striking at periods when the struggle amongst the employing class has been keenest. ”

“ While population increased in the thirty years by 22 per cent., the number of incomes liable to income-tax increased by 161 per cent., and of these, the incomes that have increased in much the largest proportion are precisely those middling or lower middling incomes which I have before shown to have unfortunately declined since 1688. While the number of incomes over £1,000 a year has increased by 165 per cent., the number of incomes between £150 and £400 a year has increased by 256 per cent. ”

“ The manual workers in our present population of 44,000,000 maybe estimated at 15,000,000 and they take, as we have seen, about £700,000,000 out of a total estimated income of £1,840,000,000, or less than 40 per cent. ”

“ I think, with proper management, that I have but little to fear as to this world. I think I can, with industry, average from two to three thousand dollars a year, which is a tolerable income, though not equal to $2,600,000! ”

“ This least productive employment of capital must [Pg 107] determine the rate of interest customary in a country precisely as cost of production on the most unfavorable land determines the price of corn (§§ 110, 150) , and as the result of the work of the laborer last employed does the rate of wages. (§ 165.)
What portion of the total national income, after deduction is made of rent, shall go to the capitalists and what portion to the working class, will depend mainly on whether the capitalists compete more greedily for labor or the laboring classes for capital. ”

“ The economical and statistical experts of our government's Department of Labor represent that the bare necessities of a comfortable and efficient life for a family of five require an annual income of $1,500, and that the simple luxuries, which are next to being indispensable, require an additional $1,000, in all $2,500, per year. ”

“ The enormous increase in our national income and our national capital is doubted or denied by no one. Now let us express the increase in income as a supposed increase in the average height of the rooms inhabited by the population. ”

“ Figure 9 gives gives the same result but then as a net income plot. The horizontal axis gives income, the vertical axis net income. The tax is given by the difference between net income and the 45-degrees line. Subsistence now is a horizontal line at B. The intersection of the B-line and the net income line gives the minimum wage M. You must earn at least M to satisfy the minimum net income requirement B.
Figure 9: Net income plot
The Tax Void Let us now combine the earnings distribution and the tax plot. ”

“ Secondly, the careful figures collected by these statisticians show that the national income equally divided throughout the community would yield an average income, per family, of about £182 per annum. ”

“ When an artist who earns $10,000 per annum appears in a country, the gross national income increases in a way similar to that in which it increases when a new commodity is found which would have a yearly increase of value equal to $10,000 over and above that of the raw material. ”

“ If the industrial, commercial and leisure classes of the population are collectively considered, total income and aggregate prices are subject to similar concurrent changes. It is a truism, often overlooked, that the sum of prices paid constitutes the total of wages, interest, rents and profits which compose the money-income of society and, per se, the direct means of acquiring the necessities and comforts of life. The measuring and estimating of changes in the cost of living, therefore, is resolved into a comparative study of incomes and expenditures. ”

“ From this it appears that the increase of what is known as working-class income in the aggregate is greater than that of any other class, being 100 per cent, while the return to capital and the return to what are called the capitalist classes, whether it is from capital proper or, as I maintain, a return only in the nature of wages, has only increased about 100 per cent, although capital itself has increased over 150 per cent. ”

“ It is no slight evil that the class whose experience, from their having had to deal with expenditure on a large scale and with economy on a large scale, would be peculiarly valuable, should have almost entirely withdrawn themselves from parochial work.
After much inquiry into this subject, I find that, broadly speaking, the per-centage of his income that a man pays to the poor rates is often in the inverse ratio to the amount of his income. The wealthier he is the smaller the per-centage he pays. Take the case of a man doing a large business with only a moderately large office and warehouse. ”

“ The peculiarities of any business or employment make great variation in the ability given by a certain income in dollars and cents. The business man in a small town, with an income of $5,000, might live in relative luxury, and still have a surplus for investment in his business. The same man, attempting business in a large city, might, even with an income of $10,000, find it barely possible to keep up appearances. ”

“ The insolvency of the wage-earning class is recognized by Gregory King in his calculations of the income and expense of the several Families of England, for the year 1680. All other classes, including artisans and handicrafts show a balance of income over expenditure but the families of seamen, labourers and soldiers show an actual yearly deficit. ”

“ The broad fact that the United States census of 1870 estimated the average annual income of our wage-workers at a little over $400 per capita, and that the census of 1880 estimates it at a little over $300 per capita, is the quite sufficient evidence that there is a labor question coming upon us in this country. The average wages of 1870 indicated, after due allowance for the inclusion of women and children, a mass of miserably paid labor—that is, of impoverished and degraded labor. ”

“ United States.—Greater natural resources here give a greater gross and net income, with equal labor. I am inclined to put our gross income between $6 and $7,000,000,000. I do not believe our annual saving, in prosperous years, in excess of five per cent., or from $300 to $400,000,000. ”

“ With full recognition of the roughness of the work in this study, I hold it be sufficient to dispel the idea that something like 65 per cent of the wealth of the United States is owned by less than 2 per cent of the people, and consider that it clears away the seeming paradox between that idea and the established fact that about 70 per cent of the national income, other than agricultural, goes to the wage earners, with only 30 per cent to property and management. ”

“ The employers and employes divided labor's product so evenly that the difference does not amount to one-eighth of one per cent.
The decade 1890 to 1900 has been of unprecedented prosperity to capital, but the advantages to labor have not appeared. When the number of laborers at the beginning and the close of the decade are [166] considered the annual income of the wage-earner at the close of the decade is actually $7 per year less than ten years ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The total income of the society appears, at the time of its dissolution in 1537, to have been more than nine hundred pounds a-year; which would be represented by about ten times that value in our time, or nine thousand a-year. ”

“ LOW-INCOME.— The term `low-income ́ means— (A) in the case of owner-occupied units, income not in excess of 80 percent of area median income; and (B) in the case of rental units, income not in excess of 80 percent of area median income, with adjustments for smaller and larger families, as determined by the Secretary. (9) MEDIAN INCOME.— The term `median income ́ means, with respect to an area, the unadjusted median family income for the area, as determined and published annually by the Secretary. ”

“ A series of novel diagrams is presented showing, for each family, their earnings from week to week, their average earnings for the year and a comparison of this with the minimum and fair standards.
An additional study was made of the wages of seventy-five families for a year, the figures being secured from the mill pay roll. The income of fifteen families fell below even the minimum; twenty-two had more than the fair standard, and thirty-eight between the two. ”

“ There are important classes of income which do not pay income tax, and there are items of property which do not yield income at all, e.g., the furniture in houses and public buildings. Again, of some important classes of income only a certain portion is supposed to be due to capital in the strict sense of the term, that is to say, as distinct from labour. ”

“ Every year his employers advanced his salary, and, on attaining his majority, it was further advanced to the sum of one thousand dollars per annum. With every increase the young man had devoted a larger and larger proportion of his income to improving the condition of his father’s family, and when it was raised to the sum last mentioned, he took a neat, comfortable new house, much larger than the family had before lived in, and paid the whole rent himself. ”

“ In connexion with property or large capital, the labourer gains in the stability of employment, and the regularity of income incidental to operations on a large scale; there is a mutual benefit also in the wages for service being given in the shape of buildings or permanent and assured comforts; that is, in what would be the best application of wages, rather than wholly in money wages. ”

“ A small portion of the American people are in receipt of incomes that necessitate a report to the revenue officers. Among those persons, a small number are in receipt of incomes that might be termed large—incomes of $10,000 or over, for example. Among these persons with large incomes the majority of the income is secured in the form of rent, interest, dividends and profits. The higher the income group, the larger is the percentage of the income that comes from property holdings. ”

“ The working-classes have had large additions to their means; capital has increased in about equal ratio; but the increase of capital per head of the capitalist classes is by no means so great as the increase of working-class incomes.
I should wish further to point out, however, that it is a mistake to speak of the income in the various schedules to the income-tax as the income of a few, or exclusively of classes which can be called capitalist, or rich. ”

“ If it be true, as indicated in our Lesson on the Productive Process, that the legitimate activities of Government belong in the Wealth production category as a Labor factor, then the Economically legitimate income of Government, whether through Taxation or otherwise, would seem to belong to the Distributive category of Wages. ”

“ If the income distribution remains the same (all incomes grow with the same rate) then also the average income, y = W grows at the same rate, and then also the net income distribution remains the same, and then the ratio of net average to subsistence remains the same too. ”

“ If we accept the Assessments as representing the actual wages earned by the ordinary labourer we can estimate with approximate accuracy the total income of a labourer’s family, for we have defined the wage-earner as a person who depended wholly upon wages and excluded from this class families who possessed gardens. ”

“ With every further advance, the condition of the laboring class is modified, according as the natural decline in this relative amount of their wages is outweighed or counterbalanced, or neither outweighed nor counterbalanced, by the increase in the aggregate product; in other words, in the national income in general as compared with the number of workmen. ”

“ In common language the word income applies to money received from any source. It may be qualified as gross income and net income. It may be limited by words defining the source of the income, as, from land, merchandise or banking, but, in its general sense, it means gross savings from all sources. When received in money it is an income and not until then. ”

“ It seems as if we can take the formulas and graphs of the statics case, and compare real incomes regardless of the time. However, in dynamics, ‘minimum income’ is not just ‘income’ but is a mechanism. The concept of M is that it picks out one income as the minimum, but it can pick that income at a different rate of growth depending upon the mechanism. The interaction between indexation, net subsistence, the tax parameters cause a multiplier effect. ”