The goods and services that constitute our national income are valued severally and collectively with a fair amount of accuracy in terms of money.
For a gold standard, though by no means perfect for the work of monetary measurement, is stable and has a single definite meaning to all men.By means of it we can estimate the rates of growth or decline in our industry, as an aggregate or in its several departments, and the quantities of output and consumption of the various products.We can compare the growth of our national wealth with that of other nations.
But how far can these measurements of concrete wealth furnish reliable information regarding the vital values, the human welfare, which all economic processes are designed to yield? Though it will be generally admitted that every increase of economic wealth is in some measure conducive to welfare, every decrease to illfare, nobody will pretend even approximately to declare what that measure is, or to lay down any explicit rules relating wealth to welfare, either for an individual or a nation.Indeed, even the general assumption that every growth of wealth enhances welfare cannot be admitted without qualification.An injurious excess of income is possible for an individual, perhaps for a nation, and the national welfare which an increased volume of wealth seems capable of yielding might be more than cancelled by a distribution which bestowed upon a few an increased share of the larger wealth, or by an aggravation of the toil of the producers.
Such obvious considerations drive us to seek some intelligible and consistent method of human valuation for economic goods and processes.
To find a standard of human welfare as stable and as generally acceptable as the monetary standard is manifestly impossible.Indeed, the difficulties attending any sort of calculus of vital values might appear insuperable, were it not for one reflection.Every statesman, social reformer, philanthropist, every public-spirited citizen, does possess and apply to the conduct of affairs some such standard or criterion as we are seeking.Some notion or idea, more or less clear and explicit, of the general welfare, crossed and blurred no doubt by other interests and passions, is an operative and directive influence in his policy.Moreover, though idiosyncrasies will everywhere affect this operative ideal, there will be found among persons of widely different minds and dispositions a substantial body of agreement in their meaning of human welfare.The common social environment partly evokes, partly imposes, this agreement.In fact, all co-operative work for social progress implies the existence of some such standard as we are seeking.The complex image of human values which it contains is always slowly changing, and varies somewhat among different sorts and conditions of men.But for the interpretation of economic goods and processes it has, at any time, a real validity.For it is anchored to certain solid foundations of human nature, the needs and functions to which, alike in the individual and in the society, we give the term 'organic.' Only by considering the organic nature of man and of human society can we trace an intelligible order in the evolution of industry.The wants of man, and therefore the economic operations serving them must be treated as organic processes.
This term, borrowed from biology, must be extended so as to cover the entire physical and spiritual structure of human society, for no other term is so well fitted to describe the nature of the federal unity which society presents.The standard of values thus set up is the current estimate of 'organic welfare.'
The justification of these terms and of this mode of human valuation is to be found in their application to the task before us.These tools will be found to do the work better than any others that are available.
