Curiously enough, Economic students who ignore “value levels” readily recognize “price levels.” But what else are “price levels” than “value levels” expressed in Money terms? If a hammer will exchange for a chisel in the processes of Trade, they are of equal value—not price, but value. If the Money price of one is two dollars and that of the other is also two dollars, they are of equal price as well as equal value. And except as Money may vary in purchasing power through lack of stabilization, or commodities may vary in relative desirability or industrial cost, the price level and the value level tend to rise and fall together. That is to say, the essential consideration is one of relative values of commodities (which is determined by difficulties of production and delivery), but the superficial consideration is the purchasing power of Money, by which those relative values are more or less accurately measured and expressed in price lists.
Values thus expressed rise and fall. They do so in terms of Price when measured by Money; they do so in the essentials of Value when measured by comparisons of commodities. As a rule, however, Money-prices are fair guides to Commodity values. Commodity values rise and fall according to cost of production, inclusive of delivery; and in so far as Money is stable, the rise and fall in prices is evidence of variations in production cost.
The relative rise and fall in Value, be it measured by prices in Money or otherwise, is so common a phenomenon of Trade that critics might be pardoned for denying a Value level.
Nevertheless there is such a level. It may be illustrated by “sea level.” We readily understand and confidently base important physical calculations upon the assumption of a constantly level sea. Yet there is no such thing. Waves rise above the surface of the sea at their crest and fall below it in their hollows. Tides contribute other variations. So with Value in Trade. Literally a level of Value is unknown. Values continually rise and fall, like the waves and the tides of the sea. Yet there is as to Value a “mean level.” Such a level or tendency may be found in the relation of service-cost to consumption-desirability.
Though we measure service-value by Money, though Money fluctuates as a Value-measuring device, though some individual services fall in product value relatively to the productive power of service, though some individual services may increase in Value for one reason or another, there is nevertheless a Value level in Trade which tends constantly to maintain an equilibrium between service-value and service-utility. Money-measured Value and Money standards of Value may rise above or fall below the service-cost of produced commodities. Nevertheless, service-cost in commodities is the determining fact—the Value level in Trade. Measured and expressed by Money, that Value level is the Price level.
Trade phenomena, to which this Lesson has been devoted, though they lead down to the Basic Facts, the foundation facts, of Economics, do not themselves, either wholly or in any of their details, belong in the Basic Fact region. Though nearer to the Basic Facts of Economics than the phenomena of Money, our consideration of which immediately preceded our consideration of Trade, the phenomena of Trade are one layer above the Basic Facts toward which we have been delving down from the Economic surface, Money, and through the subsurface, Trade. To the Basic Facts of Economics our next Lesson will be devoted.
FOURTH LESSON
THE BASIC FACTS
The purpose of the preceding Lessons has been to pierce through the surface and the immediate subsurface of Economics down to the Basic Facts. On the surface, as we have seen, Economics appears to be the science of making Money, whereas Money is in fact only the medium and measure of Value in Trade. We have further seen that the immediate subsurface, Trade, consists apparently in exchanges of tangible commodities but essentially in interchanges of human service. We are now to inspect the Basic Facts.
The Basic Facts of Economics consist of natural groupings or categories of all the myriads of minor facts with which the science of Economics is concerned. Of those categories there are exactly three. By no possibility can there be more; by no possibility can there be less. Natural law fixes the number.
The first Basic Fact—not first in order of creation, but first in our perceptions of Economic necessity—is Man. Without Man, Economics could have neither incentive nor power, neither cause nor effect.