Each member of an industrial community receives his money income as the market equivalent of value created in goods or services by the requisites of production, land, capital, labour which he owns. For every £1 paid as income an equivalent quantity of material or non-material wealth has been already created.
Let A be the owner of a requisite of production, receiving £500 a year as income in weekly payments of £10. Before receiving each £10 he has caused to come into existence an amount of wealth which, if material goods, may or may not be still in existence; if services, has already been consumed. It is evident that A may each week consume £10 worth of goods and services without affecting the general condition of public wealth. A, however, determines to consume only £5 worth of goods and services each week, and puts the other £5 into the bank. Now what becomes of the £5 worth of goods and services which A might have consumed, but refused to consume? Do they necessarily continue to exist so long as A is credited with the money which represents their "saving"; if so, in what form? In other words, what actually takes place in the world of commerce when money income is said to be saved, what other industrial facts stand behind the financial fact of A depositing part of his income in the bank as "savings"?
To this question several answers are possible.
(1) B, a spendthrift owner of land or capital, wishing to live beyond his income, may borrow from the bank each £5 which A puts in, mortgaging his property. In this case B spends what A might have spent; B's property (former savings perhaps?) falls into A's hands. A has individually effected a "saving" represented by tangible property, but as regards the community there is no saving at all, real or apparent.
(2) C, a fraudulent promoter of companies, may by misrepresentation get hold of A's saved money, and may spend it for his own enjoyment, consuming the goods and services which A might have consumed, and giving to A "paper" stock which figures as A's "savings." Here A has individually effected no saving.
From the point of view of the community there is no real saving (C has consumed instead of A), but so long as the "stock" has a market value there is an apparent saving. To this category belongs the "savings" effected if A lends his money to a government to be spent on war. From the standpoint of the community there is no saving (unless the war be supposed to yield an asset of wealth or security), but A's paper stock represents his individual saving. A's "saving" is exactly balanced by the spending of the community in its corporate capacity, A receiving a mortgage upon the property of the community.[159]
(3) D and E, manufacturers or traders, engaged in producing luxuries which A used to buy with his £5 before he took to saving, finding their weekly "takings" diminished and being reduced to financial straits, borrow A's "savings" in order to continue their business operations, mortgaging their plant and stock to A. So long as, with the assistance of A's money, they are enabled to continue producing, what they produce is over-supply, not needed to supply current consumption, assuming the relation between spending and saving in the other members of the community remains unaltered. This over-supply is the material representative of A's "savings." So far as real capital is concerned there is no increase by A's act of saving, rather a decrease, for along with the net reduction in the consumption of luxuries on the part of the community due to A's action, there must be a fall in the "value" of the capital engaged in the various processes of producing luxuries, uncompensated by any other growth of values. But by A's "saving" new forms of capital exist which bear the appearance of capital, though in reality they are "over-supply." These empty forms represent A's saving. Of course A, with full knowledge of the facts, would only lend to D and E up to the real value of their mortgaged capital. When this point was reached D and E could get no further advances, and their stock and plant would pass into A's hands. From the point of view of the community A's action has resulted in the creation of a number of material forms of capital which, so long as the existing relations between the community's production and consumption continue, stand as over-supply.
(4) A may hand over his weekly £5 to F on security. F by purchase obtains the goods which A refused to consume, and may use them (or their equivalent in other material forms) as capital for further production. If F can with this capital help to produce articles for which there is an increasing consumption, or articles which evoke and satisfy some new want, then A's action will have resulted in "saving" from the point of view of the community—i.e., there will be an increase of real capital; forms of capital which would otherwise have figured as over-supply have the breath of economic life put into them by an increase in general consumption. No real difficulty arises from a doubt whether the goods and services which A renounced were capable of becoming effective capital. The things he renounced were luxurious consumptive goods and services. But he could change them into effective capital in the following way:—Designing henceforth to consume only half his income, he would deliberately employ half the requisites of production which furnished his income in putting extra plant, machinery, etc., into some trade. Whether he does this himself, or incites F to do it, makes no difference; it will be done. In this way, by establishing new forms of useful capital, A can make good his saving, assuming an increase of general consumption. These are the four possible effects of A's saving from the point of view of the community—
(1) Nil.
(2) Bogus or "paper" saving.
(3) Over-supply of forms of capital.
(4) Increase of real capital.
It appears then that every act which in a modern industrial society is "saving," from the standpoint of the community, and not a mere transfer of "spending" from one person to another, consists in the production of a form of goods in its nature or position incapable of present consumption.