The Christian ethic as an economic factor : the social service lecture, 1926 / by Sir Josiah Stamp.

  • Stamp, Josiah, Sir, 1880-1941.
Date:
[1926]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Christian ethic as an economic factor : the social service lecture, 1926 / by Sir Josiah Stamp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pre-war production, whereas to get the same per head, allowing for increase in population, it must be at least 107 per cent. (b) My own computations for post-war years of the effect of redistribution of spendable income have been given elsewhere.' I may sum them up as follows : For 1919-20, if all individual income in excess of £250 per annum were put into a pool, and from the pool was first taken the taxation being borne by individuals (out of the income so pooled), and also the amount necessary to the community for savings on the pre-war scale, and the balance left in the pool were shared out to all as an addition to spendable income, the addition would not exceed 5s. per week to be added to each family for the first occasion, and probably less afterwards. ‘ Some of you may have read that the effect of spreading the Alps, with all their majestic mass and volume, over the whole of Europe, would be to affect the level of Europe by a few inches only. Similarly, the effect of spreading such a mass as the Himalayas over Asia would be to raise the plains very slightly.’* When one tries to account for the total sum spent on various forms of luxury, the above conclusions seem to be invalidated, but the statistical difficulty is largely met when it is realized that a hypothetical amount for savings is taken into the figures, and that there is certainly far less being saved than before the war, in comparable values per head. This, of course, will have a cramping effect on future expansion of production. (Vide Appendix II.) I am not here in any way defending the existing inequality of wealth, and still less the display of wanton and provoca¬ tive luxury on the part of a small fraction of the community. I am only endeavouring to show that the economic millen¬ nium does not lie along the line of redistribution and equalizing of the present total. The effect of this course is 1 Wealth and Taxable Capacity, iii. * In a lecture at Cambridge in 1925 I brought the computations more up to date, and a summary is given in Appendix III.