Income

“ A now receives his income, not from the produce of his capital, but from some other source of income belonging to C, probably from the rent of his land, that is, from payments made to him by farmers out of the produce of their capital. ”

“ 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. ”

“ B spends his income chiefly on American pictures and other works of art. C spends most of his income on American servants. D saves and buys United States bonds. E employs most of his income in the production of manufactures. Explain the various effects of these different modes of expenditure on the amount of wealth in the United States, and on the working-classes of the country. ”

“ Gross income' includes gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service, of whatever kind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, trades, businesses, commerce, or sales, or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in such property ”

“ The owner of an enterprise may collect profits. Each lives by owning.
Workers produce goods and services. They are paid an income proportioned to their production.
Owners of land, capital and consumer goods are paid incomes proportioned to their ownership.
Workers work for a living. Owners live by ownership, chiefly of land and the implements of production.
Owners of property frequently are rich. Workers, by comparison, are poor. The line separating owners from workers also separates riches from poverty.
Income from services rendered, from work, is earned income. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Economy in personal and family expenditures was the text from which the lesson was drawn.
In my prosperous days when I made large annual profits, I did not realize how foolishly extravagant was my scale of living, for every year I was adding a handsome amount to my accumulations which were steadily increasing, and yet, looked at from the standpoint of this clear-headed, successful business man, I was expending far more than what should have been regarded as my income. ”

“ Then there is needless complication in dividing the income into eighty-eight parts, splitting it up into small proportions, so that it reaches the hands of those who have to distribute it in driblets, giving an amount of trouble and anxiety out of all proportion to the importance of the sums, or the benefit to those receiving them. ”

“ Why should a man, whose income, perhaps derived from land or funded property below £150, pay nothing, while a hard working clerk, attorney, or country surgeon, who makes £155, and is not worth a tenth part of the other's realised capital, pays income-tax? ”

“ Even you, Monsieur Gagnon, could look into the future on those terms. When the expenses exceed the income, what takes place? One pays out all one's ready money, one borrows, sells a cow, a horse, a piece of land. ”

“ I pointed out further that the income of the individual is necessarily limited by the amount of the income of the nation; and that therefore the increase, or at all events the maintenance, of the existing income of the nation is implied in all hopes of social and economic progress, and forms the foundation on which all such hopes are based. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus may any Gentleman, with very little trouble, apportion his Income:—and as no two Gentlemen live exactly alike, this Table will shew, by inspection only, what branch of Expense may best be curtailed, so as to afford an addition to any other branch, and still keep his whole Expenses short of his actual Revenue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All my life through—from the time when my income was not a tenth part of what it is now—I have felt it a duty, while endeavoring to discharge all proper claims, to live within that income, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a margin on the right side. ”

“ Take, for instance, the common notion so plausible at the first glance, of the encouragement given to industry by lavish expenditure. A, who spends his whole income, and even his capital, in expensive living, is supposed to give great employment to labor. B, who lives on a small portion, and invests the remainder in the funds, is thought to give little or no employment. For every body sees the gains which are made by A's tradesmen, servants, and others, while his money is spending. ”

“ The man who derives an income of £1000 a-year from landed property, or from the funds, is in a far better position than the divine, the lawyer, the physician, or the military officer, whose incomes perish with their persons. ”

“ In this way a first approximation will be made to the income derived from 'living' capital, and greater accuracy may be then attained by considering in more detail certain kinds of income, and also certain comparatively permanent sources of 'wealth' (personal) which do not yield income. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an excellent plan to have a set of rules for regulating the ordinary expenses of a family, (such as are given in the Appendix to the practical economy,) in order to check any innovation or excess, which otherwise might, unawares, have occurred to derange the proposed distribution of the annual income. ”

“ For five or six years the income has not been forty thousand, but there has been no reduction in the style of expenditure. Whence comes the money? Not a burden has been shaken off, fresh are annually heaped on. ”

“ Suppose such were the result, and suppose five hundred dollars capital to be enough to employ each man’s labor, the only difference between the annual income of a man, who should own his capital, and of one who should borrow his, would be barely the interest paid by the latter-that is, fif­teen, twenty, twenty-five, or thirty dollars, according as he should pay three, four, five, or six per cent. ”

“ Senior says that of the income of £4,000 which a lawyer or a doctor draws, only £40 are wages for his labor; £3,000 are a rent paid for the possession of extraordinary talent, or for his good luck, and £960 as the interest on his intellectual capital, which is also the chief element of wealth. ”

“ When we think that the education of his large family, the hospitality to strangers, the journeys to try organs in various places, were all accomplished on an income of not much over £100 a year, we must admire the business-like capacity of the man, even though all due allowance is made for the difference in the purchasing power of money in those days. ”

“ Setting the daily income of each person in France at 68 centimes, the father of a family who, whether as wages or as income from his capital, receives 1,000 francs a year receives four shares of the national income ”

“ The necessity of practising economy should be evident to every one, whether in the possession of an income no more than sufficient for a family's requirements, or of a large fortune, which puts financial adversity out of the question. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wage in the broad sense is the income due to labor, in distinction from that due to the control of material agents. The uses of material agents, studied under the subject of rent, are sometimes called "material services." ”

“ Given a certain income and you know exactly what you can afford to have. You can't have a moor and a deer forest on a precarious six hundred a year. Here you can have as good, and no scale of income to measure by. ”

“ As a stepping-stone to a series of more important considerations, showing that these periods of consecrations should very frequently recur, I remark that most may set apart some portion of income without inconvenience as often at least as capital or labor makes returns. ”

“ Moreover, one-quarter of the income should be taken of all beneficiaries actually resident in their benefices, in cases where the revenue was from 500 to 1,000 livres; of those having a revenue of 1,000 to 3,000 livres, one-third; of those with incomes running from 3,000 to 6,000 livres, one-half ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is at stake is 7 years of unparalleled prosperity. In those 7 years, the real income of the average American, after taxes, rose by almost 30 percent - a gain as large as that of the entire preceding 19 years. ”

“ There are but two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out. ”

“ Farming, mining, cotton spinning, shoemaking, building, and a myriad of other occupations all work together to create an aggregate of goods which constitute the social income. In each of these branches of business there are men and working appliances contributing each a part to the quota that this branch furnishes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If his income be one hundred thousand dollars and his expenses five thousand, one-third will he have to pay because he has still a surplus since his expenses are five thousand and his income one hundred thousand. ”

“ This income comprises the items of income received in advance of the full performance of the service required to earn it. In cases of this kind there are in the possession of the business certain assets which must be used to perform the service not yet completed in order to entitle the business to the full enjoyment of the income. ”

“ Every workman pays it in his food and clothing; every mechanic and artisan, in his tools; every housewife, in her cooking-stove and flat-iron; every merchant, in the stamp upon his note; every man of salary, in the income tax ”

“ We were doing one hundred per cent of work and getting thirty per cent of results. If we would get one hundred per cent of results, we should produce three and one-third times as much wealth, and the income of our workers would be increased one or two thousand dollars a year. ”

“ Objective income consists of the additional sums of goods acquired by individuals or by society during the income period. The term national or social income may be contrasted with individual or private income in the objective sense. The nature of the acquisition of objective incomes may, in some cases, be different if viewed from the social and individual standpoints. Society, as a whole, may be said to acquire income only when goods are produced; individuals may acquire income by gift, bequest, theft, or other modes of transfer from other individuals. ”

“ Stated in more familiar terms, the plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income—as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced— should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful, On this basis we may build further. ”

“ A poor stream of ponderable commodities filters through thousands of unnecessary channels, and becomes the subject of many strange services, each of which claims and gets some sort of reward. By the enumeration of each of these services the total income which we examined at the beginning of this book is made up. ”

“ The people who save rather for the sake of the capital sum that can be realized than for that of the annual interest are very numerous, and probably include many men in receipt of quite considerable earned incomes. ”