Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/47

prosperity and progress. Distribute wealth equally, or even equitably, you pull down the edifice of modern industry! For the saving under any equitable system of distribution will be inadequate to progress! Is it really true that our industrial welfare is dependent upon inequitable distribution? Is there this fundamental contradiction between economy and morals? Is dishonesty the best policy?

Though Sir W. Beveridge does not go so far as Mr. Keynes in his defence of inequality, he feels the same concern for saving under a more equal distribution. "If incomes were so far equalised that all saving meant sacrifice of a keenly desired present good for a future one, it is extremely likely that no sufficient provision for new capital would be made at all."^[1] And he adds, "There is, indeed, no probability of determining a priori how the national income can best be allocated between immediate consumption and investment in the means of future production. In other words, there is no criterion for saying beforehand what is over-saving and what is not." Though this last statement is true, it is not to the point. For though over-saving cannot with certainty be predicted, it can be detected when it has taken place, and its detective is trade depression. As for the fear of undersaving, it may, indeed, seem to be warranted by experience of the use by the manual workers of sudden increase of pay. But such increases coming as windfalls with no security of permanence are necessarily prone to abuse. In every grade of society 'lightly got' is lightly spent. The very