JB_017_286.xml

Title: [29 Aug 1801 E Polit. Economy]

Description: 29 Aug 1801

E

Polit. Economy

Method

Finance

Taxation

94

8

Taxes are either on property, or on a presumption of property.

In both cases, they are either on income or on capital.

Taxes on property in the shape of income are either direct, or on consumption

called of late years from the French indirect taxes.

Taxes on capital diminish present capital and thence future and growing wealth,

by the whole of their amount: taxes on income by the amount of the savings that

would have been made out of income and added to capital instead of being spent

on maintenance, had it not been for the tax.

The fault of direct taxes on presumption of property is inequality: that of

direct taxes on property, is vexation: indirect taxes have no fault beyond the

mere privation which must be undergone at any rate: the vexation which in the

case of direct taxes on property is extended /extends itself/ to every body,

confines itself in the case of indirect taxes to the manufacturers /fabricators/

and vendors who make themselves amends for it in the price.

JB_017_185.xml

Title: [29 Aug. 1801 Polit. Economy]

Description: 29 Aug. 1801

Polit. Economy

E

9

Method

Finances

Taxation

Foreign capital obtained on loans is doubly useful: at the time of borrowing

/contracting debt/, by diminishing the /that/ consumption of capital, by which

the mass of growing wealth is diminished: at the time of paying off debt, by

diminishing that inordinate encrease of capital, by which as if it were by an

unproductive income tax the income of money'd men is reduced.(a)

Ever since the existence of Government Annuities, men have cried out against the

Annuitants, especially such of them as are foreigners as so many drones and

bloodsuckers: with as much reason might they cry out against the Baker they deal

with as a bloodsucker for taking money for his bread.

The quantity of foreign capital that in an unascertainable but always a very

considerable quantity has always been sent by foreigners for the purchase of

British Government Annuities has been a fruit and evidence of probity and good

faith.

Note

(a) If however the quantity of capital employ'd by foreigners in the purchase of

British Government Annuities has been such as to produce an influx of the

materials of money, and thence of money to such an amount as to overballance the

increase in the same time in the mass of vendible commodities, and thereby to

produce encrease of prices depretiation of money, and indirect income tax, so

much as operates in that character does thereby more harm than good. But without

the addition to money by paper money, addition of this sort would hardly have

taken place.

JB_099_185.xml

Title: [Polit. Econ. Analysis 20 June 1801]

Description: Polit. Econ. Analysis

20 June 1801

[Col 1]

According to these topics the same articles be ranged in different orders.

I. Subject matter of operation.

Original—Land

1. Uncovered with water.

2. Covered with water.(All Sea, [...?], Rivers and Lakes.

II. Operator or Agent

Principal/Orignal—Man—by Labour

2. Subordinate

1. Animate—Cattle

2. Inanimate—Machines

Topics

Ends in view or Uses to which encrease of wealth is subservient.

1 Subsistence

2. Enjoyment

3. Security or defence.

*II. Subject Matters

I. Natural state

1. Mineral

2. Vegetable

3. Animal

II. Improved state

1. Unmixt, as above.

2. Compunded or mixt without alteration.

3. Modified by fabrication.

______________________

III. Principal Operations

1. Discovery

2. Extraction[?]

3. Production or Naturalization[?]

4. Improvement

5. Preservation

6. Employment or Use

7. Land conveyance

8. Exchange

IIII. Agents

1. Individuals

2. Government

V. Means of action or influence on the part of Government

1. Encouragement

2. Discouragement

1. Unoptional—prohibition

2. Optional—Taxation To Col V

[Col 5]

Topics continued from Col I

VI. Taxation

an operation not formative/conducive to but obstructive of encrease of wealth, yet every where employ’d through necessity for the purpose of defence.

Will/inclination[?]/ to the encrease of wealth can not be wanting on the part of any individual: tho’ in some instances it is overpowered by the will to spend it, yet in the most unfrugal community the spendthrifts are in but small proportion.

But in the struggle for encreasing wealth each to his utmost it will happen that one man shall give encrease to his wealth in such manner as shall occasion a more than equivalent decrease on the part of others:—here then comes the demand for the interposition of the law.

[Col. 2]

Quantity of wealth is absolute or relative—Relative involves population, of which separately.

Wealth is the produce of /labour and/ land and labour—of labour operating upon land itself or the produce of it.

Note.

Encreasing the quantity of land will not encrease the quantity of wealth, unless it encreases either the quantity of labour or the effect of it.

______________

Every means employed for the encrease of wealth may therefore be resolved into encrease of 1. the quantity of labour. 2. the effect of it.

______________

Wealth itself is of no value but as an instrument of either 1. Subsistence. 2. Security or defence. 3. Enjoyment. The value of a given mass of wealth to be measured must be measured with reference to these several objects.

[Col. 3]

Subsistence affords an exact measure of the value of a mass of wealth—With reference to Subsistence, the value of a mass of the means of subsistence, is as the number of individuals it will subsist for a certain time.

With reference to Security, the value of a mass of wealth adapted to that purpose does not admitt of any such measure—It is still, however, the joint ratio of the quantity of the labour employ’d in the production of it—and the effect of it.

All instruments of Subsistence are instruments of enjoyment: but there are instruments of enjoyment which are not instruments of subsistence.

[Col. 4]

Enjoyments distinguished according to their Seat or Inlet are

1. Sensual

2. Mental

3. Mixt

Sensual enjoyments, by the principle of association are rendered mental also, and by that means mixt.

The enjoyment derived from objects in any degree sensual depends upon—

1.The state of the sense or organ to which the object is applied.

2. The nature of the object or instrument by which, when applied to the organ, the enjoyment is produced.

On the part of the object—the mass of enjoyments is encreased by every addition to the variety of the collection of instruments of enjoyment taken together—by novelty on the part of any one.

[Col. 6]

Materials of wealth considered as employd for the purpose of encreasing the quantity or value of a mass of wealth are called Capital.

The national wealth is the aggregate of the wealth of individuals.

Wealth and Capital is real or pecuniary.

Pecuniary capital is money employd in the way of exchange in purchasing the labour, [...?] materials or land of which real capital is composed.

Capital or wealth acts no otherwise than as far as it acts on labour.

It encreases wealth no otherwise than as far as it encreases either the quantity or the effect of labour.

[Col. 7]

II. Subject Matters

—with reference to the mode of their subserviency to use.

1. Ground.

2. Materials to be improved.

3. Instruments

4. Receptacles

5. Productions in a state for use.

__________

Receptacles

1. Stationary, viz: Buildings.

2. Moveable or /Ambulatory/occasional. viz:

1. Carriages

2. Navigable vessels.

Receptacles are

1. Particular; such as such as vessels, chests, boxes &c.

2. General—or buildings in which the particular vessels are contained.

__________

Proportional-quantity-stocking principle

Example

Guns in one shop

Shot in another

Powder in a third.

[Col. 8]

Means of encrease, their Comparative Importance.

1. articles of Subsistence

2. Defence—the denand for which varies with the danger.

3. Enjoyment, not contributing to subsistence.

__________

Productive Capital is composed of

1. Land with its improvements.

2. The aggregate mass of articles of subservient use )( immediate use.

__________

Opulence degree of (relative) is as the sum of labourer’s incomes to d o of all incomes

as between nation and nation, the real value of labourer’s wages being supposed the same in each.

Ceteris paribus a populous country will be the cheaper by a saving on the aggregate expence of conveyance.

[Col. 9]

Materials

Rude Produce, Application of Labour thereto

I. Extraction

1. Separation from the natural source—Land or Water.

1. Minerals—Discovery, digging, [...?], extracting, smelting.

2. Vegetables

1. Discovery

1. Felling Timber

2. Cutting herbs

3. Gathering fruits

3. Animals Housing[?]

Water

4. Fishing

1. catching

2. Curing.

II. Conveyance.

__________

Finance

Where a tax acts purely as a prohibition, that prohibition or diminution of consumption is only relative: so much as it takers from the consumption of the article tax[ed], so much it adds to the consumption of other articles: except so far as the aggregate of taxes takes from the aggregate of consumption of articles of enjoyment, to add to that of the articles of defence for which the [...?] is raised.

[Col. 10]

Unproductive taxes

I. Indirect income tax by encrease of money.

II. All measures encreasing the quantity of unprofitable labour; and thence diminishing the effect of profitable labour. viz.

1. Prohibition of export of money, thence unprofitable labour to collect the money by stealth, [...?] and find means to evade the tax.

2. Prohibition or [...?] direct trade between country and country: thence unprofitable labour &c. attendant on circuitous trade.

Finance

In proportion to the disadvantageousness of the terms on which money is borrowed it adds to [...?] though at the expence of intermediate comfort.