Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/139

available, because current production and therefore current real incomes are so low that saving has shrunk to its lowest proportions. Business profits have in most cases disappeared, taxation presses on all classes, and the great majority of the people have not the economic power, even if they had the will, to effect further economies in their current expenditure.

Unemployment, springing in the last resort from a distribution of purchasing power which gives too much to classes who have their pressing wants already satisfied, can only be remedied by a transfer of some of this purchasing power to the poorer classes who will apply it to satisfy felt wants.

I believe that the special war and post-war policies so frequently adduced to explain how this depression differs wholly from ordinary cyclical depressions can all be shown to bear testimony to this constant defect in our economic system which always works towards gluts and depressions.

An intelligently acting individual in economic isolation, a Crusoe, or a completely inclusive economic society, would maintain a just balance between the amount of energy devoted to the satisfaction of immediate wants and that devoted to preparation for the satisfaction of increasing future wants. But this intelligent economy of spending and saving need not apply to single members of an economic group, or to particular groups within some larger society. Particular members of a self-sufficing group may cut down their current consumption to any dimensions