Modern Economic Problems - Economics Volume II by Frank Albert Fetter
page 54 of 580 (09%)
page 54 of 580 (09%)
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very different, and trade would be hampered in manifold ways.
A poor community has little money because it cannot afford more; it gets along with less money than is convenient just as it gets along with fewer agents of every other kind that it could use. Pioneers in a poor community where the average wealth is low cannot afford to keep a large number of wagons, plows, good roads, or schoolhouses. If the members of the community were wealthy enough each would have more of these and of other things, and the sum total of money would be greater. Great as is the convenience of money, poorer communities have to do with little of it. It is, therefore, a confusion of cause and effect when poor communities imagine that their poverty is due to lack of money. ยง 5. #Concept of the individual monetary demand.# Let us now seek to get in mind the idea of an _individual monetary demand,_ as that amount of money which at any time is required by an individual to make his purchases in expending his income. Every man may be thought of as having an average monetary demand, or his average individual cash reserve, throughout a period. A man with a salary of $50 a month paid monthly has ordinarily a maximum monetary demand of $50. If his expenditures are made in two equal parts, the one on pay-day, the other thirty days later, his average monetary demand during the month is a little over $25. If most of his purchasing is done in the first week of the month, his average monetary demand may be perhaps $10. Many a workman purchases on credit, running accounts at the stores for a month. Then on pay day he spends his entire month's wages the day he receives it, and goes without money for the rest of the month. His average monetary demand throughout the month would then be about equal to one day's wages. Evidently any person's cash reserve may |
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