Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/76

excessive incomes, largely unexpended even upon luxurious goods and services, and accumulating in material capital which turns out to be incapable of full regular functioning in order to supply the consumption which this process permits to take place. Now the removal of the wage-lag, though diminishing the surplus, could not absorb it. No wage policy, by itself, could do more than reduce this surplus. It could not remove the differential rents, profits, interests, or other elements of income obtained for the possession of land, capital, or ability endowed with some advantage of nature or position. Nor could labour with any justice or social expediency lay claim to the monopoly-profits of trusts, combines, and other non-competitive businesses, whose control over selling prices enables them to extract excessive incomes. Such elements of surplus, as is widely recognised, form a proper source of public revenue. The removal of the wage-lag in reviving trade with rising prices and profits, therefore, must only be regarded as one contribution towards a solution of our problem. A full theoretical and practical solution can only be found in the conjunction of an adequate system of remuneration of labour with a similarly adequate system of taxation. Removal of the wage-lag will not prevent, though it will retard and diminish, trade depressions and unemployment, if the wage basis itself is a normally deficient provision for remunerating labour. Only where the normal wage basis gives a full wage of efficiency, will the removal of the wage-lag be powerfully effective to check the high profits, excessive credit, over-saving and over-