Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
While credit is thus indispensable for rendering the whole capital of the country productive, it is also a means by which the industrial talent of the country is turned to better account for purposes of production. Many a person who has either no capital of his own, or very little, but who has qualifications for business which are known and appreciated by some possessors of capital, is enabled to obtain either advances in money, or, more frequently, goods on credit, by which his industrial capacities are made instrumental to the increase of the public wealth.
Such are, in the most general point of view, the uses of credit to the productive resources of the world. But these considerations only apply to the credit given to the industrious classes—to producers and dealers. Credit given by dealers to unproductive consumers is never an addition, but always a detriment, to the sources of public wealth. It makes over in temporary use, not the capital of the unproductive classes to the productive, but that of the productive to the unproductive.
§ 3. Function of Credit in economizing the use of Money.
But a more intricate portion of the theory of Credit is its influence on prices; the chief cause of most of the mercantile phenomena which perplex observers. In a state of commerce in which much credit is habitually given, general prices at any moment depend much more upon the state of credit than upon the quantity of money. For credit, though it is not productive power, is purchasing power; and a person who, having credit, avails himself of it in the purchase of goods, creates just as much demand for the goods, and tends quite as much to raise their price, as if he made an equal amount of purchases with ready money.
The credit which we are now called upon to consider, as a distinct purchasing power, independent of money, is of course not credit in its simplest form, that of money lent by one person to another, and paid directly into his hands; for, when the borrower expends this in purchases, he makes the purchases with money, not credit, and exerts no purchasing power over and above that conferred by the money. The forms of credit which create purchasing power are those in which no money passes at the time, and very often none passes at all, the transaction being included with a mass of other transactions in an account, and nothing paid but a balance. This takes place in a variety of ways, which we shall proceed to examine, beginning, as is our custom, with the simplest.
First: Suppose A and B to be two dealers, who have transactions with each other both as buyers and as sellers. A buys from B on credit. B does the like with respect to A. At the end of the year, the sum of A's debts to B is set against the sum of B's debts to A, and it is ascertained to which side a balance is due. This balance, which may be less than the amount of many of the transactions singly, and is necessarily less than the sum of the transactions, is all that is paid in money; and perhaps even this is not paid, but carried over in an account current to the next year. A single payment of a hundred pounds may in this manner suffice to liquidate a long series of transactions, some of them to the value of thousands.
But, secondly: The debts of A to B may be paid without the intervention of money, even though there be no reciprocal debts of B to A. A may satisfy B by making over to him a debt due to himself from a third person, C. This is conveniently done by means of a written instrument, called a bill of exchange, which is, in fact, a transferable order by a creditor upon his debtor, and when accepted by the debtor, that is, authenticated by his signature, becomes an acknowledgment of debt.
§ 4. Bills of Exchange.
Bills of exchange were first introduced to save the expense and risk of transporting the precious metals from place to place.
The trade between New York and Liverpool affords a constant illustration of the uses of a bill of exchange. Suppose that A in New York ships a cargo of wheat, worth $100,000, or £20,000, to B in Liverpool; also suppose that C in Liverpool (independently of the negotiations of A and B) ships, about the same time, a cargo of steel rails to D in New York, also worth £20,000. Without the use of bills of exchange, B would have been obliged to send £20,000 in gold across the Atlantic, and so would D, at the risk of loss to both. By the device of bills of exchange the goods are really bartered against each other, and all transmission of money saved.
A has money due to him in Liverpool, and he sells his claim to this money to any one who wants to make a payment in Liverpool. Going to his banker (the middle-man between exporters and importers and the one who deals in such bills) he finds there D, inquiring for some one who has a claim to money in Liverpool, since D owes C in Liverpool for his cargo of steel rails. A makes out a paper title to the £20,000 which B owes him (i.e., a bill of exchange) and by selling it to D gets immediately his £20,000 there in New York. The form in which this is done is as follows:
New York, January 1, 1884.
At sight (or sixty days after date) of this first bill of exchange (second and third unpaid), pay to the order of D (the importer of steel rails) £20,000, value received, and charge the same to the account of
(Signed) A (exporter of wheat).
To B (buyer of wheat),
Liverpool, Eng.
D has now paid $100,000, or £20,000, to A for a title to money across the Atlantic in Liverpool, and with this title he can pay his debt to C for the rails. D indorses the bill of exchange, as follows:
Pay to the order of C (the seller of steel rails), Liverpool, value in account. D (importer of steel rails).
To B (the buyer of wheat).
By this means D transfers his title to the £20,000 to C, sends the bill across by mail (“first” in one steamer, “second” in another, to insure certain transmission) to C, who then calls upon B to pay him the £20,000 instead of B sending it across the Atlantic to A; and all four persons have made their payments the more safely by the use of this convenient device. This is the simplest form of the transaction, and it does not change the principle on which it is based, when, as is the case, a banker buys the bills of A, and sells the bills to D—since A typifies all exporters and D all importers.