Necessity (economics)

“ The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes ”

“ There is great need, also, that the expense of living should be reduced while the standards of living shall not be lowered. The business world has been trying to secure economies in production; there is even greater need of economies in distribution. ”

“ Political economy requires farther expansion in order to include all the elements of this great social problem.
It is a true doctrine that demand and supply regulate the price of all things, labour included. ”

“ The demand for consumption determines the direction in which labour will be expended in production. This principle is so simple and obvious that it needs no further illustration, yet in its light all the complexities of our subject disappear, and we thus reach the same view of the real objects and rewards of labour in the intricacies of modern production that we gained by observing in the first beginnings of society the simpler forms of production and exchange. ”

“ There is no necessity for any persons living on bread and water. We have not a man at work for us but what has had means put into his hands sufficient to support from five to twenty persons, and many of them could lay up from five hundred to a thousand dollars a year, if they would use proper economy. ”

“ Therefore, not all things which have an exchange value are wealth, in the only sense in which the term can be used in Political Economy. Only such things can be wealth the production of which increases and the destruction of which decreases the aggregate of wealth. ”

“ What more unnatural than that labor -- the producer of all food, all clothing, all shelter -- should not be exchangeable for its full equivalent in food, clothing, and shelter; that while the things it produces have value, labor, the giver of all value, should seem valueless!
Here are men, having the natural wants of man, having the natural powers of man -- powers adapted and intended and more than sufficient to supply those wants. ”

“ Of such cases, the argument to show that Demand for Commodities is not Demand for Labor, the Doctrine of International Values, and the Effect of the Progress of Society on wages, profits, and rent, are examples. ”

“ In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. ”

“ Resources were limitless; without enterprise, without labor and capital, without transportation they had no value, they were free goods. The great public task of the nineteenth century was to settle the continent and make these resources available for mankind. ”

“ The powers of wealth, the force of example, opinion, authority, laws, of every concentrated influence that can be brought to bear upon human affairs, have, all combined, been directed to a reduction of the price of labour, and consequently to diminishing the consumption of the products of human industry; for the great mass of mankind have nothing but the fruits of their labour to offer in exchange for those products which are necessary to their subsistence and comfort. ”

“ What the laborers require to live, and to marry, and beget children in sufficient numbers to supply the labor market, is their standard of life. This they obtain and no more. Labor costs labor, and is measured by labor; but labor produces more than it consumes, and this surplus-value is rent. ”

“ Let it practice true and conscientious economy, not only in the expenditure and application of public moneys, but also in the method of levying them, so as to be equally just to all classes and all economical interests. ”

“ The redundant resources so abound that they can have no value, in the sense of exchangeable value, in society; even though needed as they are in more constant supply than those of the other class. The resources which are barely adequate are those which come to be objects of personal possession ”

“ Another familiar demonstration of this natural Economic law that men both individually and in the mass seek to satisfy their Economic desires with least exertion, is the human craving for Labor-saving invention. ”

“ Our wants are many, but our real necessities are very few. Let us govern our wants by our necessities, and we shall find that we are not compelled to spend our money for naught. Let us save our money to enter and pay for our land, to buy flocks of sheep and improve them, and to buy machinery and start more woolen factories. ”

“ The principle, that value is proportional to cost of production, being consequently inapplicable, we must revert to a principle anterior to that of cost of production, and from which this last flows as a consequence,—namely, the principle of demand and supply. ”

“ There is, however, another reason for want, the responsibility for which comes nearer home. This is the tremendous waste involved in our present method of making and distributing commodities. As a people we seem to have little idea of measuring our resources, our natural wealth, and the productive power that lies in our hands and brains up against our needs, and of using them wisely and economically for the general good. ”

“ A strong case can be made out against the cheerful assumption that, the nineteenth century having attended to the questions of production, exchange, rapid locomotion and communication, markets for surplus goods, and the opening of vast tracts of territory, the twentieth will be free and willing to turn its atten- tion to the question of fair distribution of wealth, and the removal of unnecessary and unjust poverty. ”

“ We are very far from discovering the truth of this; because the increase of a production, beyond utility and demand, can add nothing to the value of the production, since value depends upon utility and demand. ”

“ Demand and supply. So we get back, in the end, to the proposition with which we started, that the purpose of economic activity and organization is to supply human needs. Where the need is felt, the demand arises. ”

“ It is in the utilization of those things which are scarce that economy is called for. These things which, being scarce, need to be economized in the interest of the largest satisfaction or well-being constitute economic goods, for which wealth is only another name. These are the things which have to be appraised, evaluated, and compared with one another with respect to their utility, in order that the limited supplies may be meted out and made to go as far as possible in the satisfaction of human desires, and in order that they may satisfy the greater rather than the lesser desires. ”

“ The labourer may obtain greater comforts; wages in kind real wages may rise. Or the progress of population may force down cultivation to inferior soils, and more costly processes; thus raising the cost of production, the value, and the price, of the chief articles of the labourer's consumption. On either of these suppositions, the rate of profit will fall. ”

“ The fundamental basis for the maintenance of national standards of living is adequate production, economical distribution, and fair apportionment among the various economic groups which constitute our society. ”

“ We must examine the nature of Capital with care, and follow its varied forms without confusion, because it is the only other factor besides labor in the production of commodities, that has to be paid for out of their sale. ”

“ The Requisites of Production. The first thing in industry, as we now see, is to decide what we want; the next thing is to get it, or make it, or, as we shall say, produce it, and we ought obviously to produce it with the least possible labour. To learn how this may be done, we must inquire what is needful for the production of wealth. There are, as is commonly and correctly said, three requisites of production ”

“ But the parallel between the utility and price of products is not characterized by this theoretical precision: either through the foresight of Nature or from some other cause, the balance between needs and productive power is more than a theory,—it is a fact, of which daily practice, as well as social progress, gives evidence. ”

“ We have surveyed the field of economical facts, and have examined how they stand related to one another as causes and effects; what circumstances determine the amount of production, of employment for labour, of capital and population; what laws regulate rent, profits, and wages; under what conditions and in what proportions commodities are interchanged between individuals and between countries. We have thus obtained a collective view of the economical phenomena of society, considered as existing simultaneously. ”

“ Thus it has been urged that by devotion to industry and by consuming less than was produced, the time would come when the world would be so well equipped that none of its workers would have to be in want of the economic essentials of a satisfactory life. ”

“ We may imagine a number of individuals or families settled on as many separate pieces of land, each living on what their own labour produces, and consuming the whole produce. But even these must save (that is, spare from their personal consumption) as much as is necessary for seed. Some saving, therefore, there must have been, even in this simplest of all states of economical relations; people must have produced more than they used, or used less than they produced. ”

“ The time has come when the nation must consider the nature of its resources, and study its own development. We must see to it that the demand for houses, the primary demand of a civilized man, is answered, not by the speculative builder, but by the nation itself. ”

“ Seeing that production is limited by consumption, what rule must be followed in distributing the results of production to be consumed in order to develop consumption to the highest possible point, and thereby in turn to create the greatest possible demand for production. ”

“ And, so, where production is carried on by the division of labor between individuals, an increase in the power of producing one of the things sought by production in the aggregate adds to the power of obtaining others, and will increase the production of the others, to an extent determined by the proportion which the saving of labor bears to the total amount of labor expended, and by the relative strength of desires. I am unable to think of any form of wealth, the demand for which would not be increased by a saving in the labor required to produce the others. ”

“ There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. ”

“ What conceals the absurdity of speaking generally of supply and demand in reference to labour is the habit of considering the demand for labour as springing from capital and as something distinct from labour ”

“ That is to say, that in the older country the consumption of wealth in proportion to population is greater, although the proportion of labor devoted to the production of wealth is less—or that fewer laborers produce more wealth; for wealth must be produced before it can be consumed. ”

“ I am going to write a Political Economy in my heavier moments. The first law I [Pg 382] lay down is, "Whenever there exists a demand, there is no supply." This is the only law that explains the extraordinary contrast between the soul of man and man's surroundings. ”

“ With natural opportunities thus free to labor; with capital and improvements exempt from tax, and exchange437 released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labor into the things they are suffering for would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms which paralyze industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; demand would keep pace with supply, and supply with demand; trade would increase in every direction, and wealth augment on every hand. ”

“ To increase the purchasing capacity of the people either by higher wages or cheaper products is to reduce the surplus and maintain an equilibrium, hence the economic value of higher standards of living. ”

“ The amount of wealth which any man receives should depend on the ratio between the demand which exists for his services and the supply of those able to render like service. Farther than these statements of the ideal principles governing the economical production and equitable distribution of wealth we need not go at present. ”

“ Besides the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labor market and to perpetuate the race of laborers... It will be seen that the value of laboring-power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain and perpetuate the laboring-power. ”

“ Therefore society as a whole must take possession of industrial capital, production for use must be substituted for production for profit, work at a good wage must be guaranteed to every one who asks for it, and the fair distribution of wealth among the workers must be regarded as of more primary importance than the quantity which is produced. ”