Chapter II. Capital and Wages
The fact that present labor gets its substantial reward from a product made chiefly by past labor was the basis of the reasoning of the classic economists. The products of the past which served to support and remunerate laborers they called capital. They inferred — indeed, assumed as a thing so obvious as hardly to need inference — that wages were paid from capital. In the second part of the present volume we shall have occasion to note how briefly and inadequately they presented this cardinal proposition.
“Diversity at the Fed” and the Arena for Allowable Discourse
The Washington Post reported on the Democratic candidates’ proposals for changing the Federal Reserve.
Part I.
Chapter I. Present Work and Present Wages
The subject of the present volume is the wages-fund doctrine and the immediate relation of capital to wages. To discuss adequately this topic it will not be necessary to consider every part of the theory of wages or of capital; yet some parts of the economic field will need to be traversed that may seem at first sight to lie beyond the limits chosen. More particularly, it will be necessary to begin with some description at large of the process of production, and of the manner in which the exertions of men yield them an enjoyable result.
Henry Hazlitt Responds to 10 Common Objections to Capitalism
A correspondent who describes himself as “a 26-year old college graduate who strongly supports a system of free enterprise,” recently wrote me to say that he is “continuously confronted with questions that are most difficult to answer.” He appended a list of 10 of them, and asked for my comments.
I offer my answer here. To save space, I have not repeated his questions, assuming they can be clearly guessed from my replies.
Dear Mr._____________________ :
Preface
I have divided the present volume into two parts: a first, of five chapters, containing a statement at large of my own views on the relation of capital to wages, and on the wages fund doctrine; and a second, of nine further chapters, in which the history of the wages fund discussion from its beginning to the present time is followed. At the close, a final chapter gives a brief summary of both parts. In this arrangement I have departed from the traditional plan, and perhaps from the strictly logical plan.
Wages and Capital
Introduction
This book, written in 1892–1895 and published in 1896, has long been out of print. The London School of Economics (University of London) now honors me by undertaking a reprint in its series of scarce books and monographs.
