Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/48

conservatism of standards of consumption, to which I have alluded, implies time for the wholesome assimilation of an increasing income. Working-class psychology is not opposed to saving from any absolute refusal to recognise and provide against future wants. The proportion of income which they save at present is small for quite intelligible reasons.

(1) Most of it, in many cases all, is required for the maintenance of a conventional standard of living which, though it may contain certain elements of physiological waste, is in the main a standard of economic efficiency.

(2) Most of such saving as they practise is not represented in what is known as productive capital. It is put either into durable commodities, such as houses, furniture, better clothing, and other personal utilities, or else into better education for themselves and their children, travel and recreation and other expenditure which upon the whole makes for higher personal and economic efficiency. In short, a larger proportion of their saving goes into personal as distinct from investment capital, than is the case with the saving of the rich. This application is probably far more productive in the long run than any small additions which these savings might otherwise have made to the volume of invested capital.

(3) Such investments as they make are mostly confined to provision against critical emergencies in the family economy, the cost of burial, sickness, disablement, old age, or unemployment. Even here few workers could by any thrift make a sufficient provision against prolonged disablement, not to speak