The Principles of Economics Part 62

3. How can a yard of cloth be said to be distributed to the labor and capital producing it?

4. If two men of equal skill go fishing together, how would they find a rule for dividing the catch?

5. If one is more skilful or stronger, or owns the boat and the tackle, how would it affect the division? Would any rule be attainable?

6. If socialism reduced the total product, would it still be desirable because of the better distribution?

7. What cla.s.ses of thinkers are most inclined to take up socialism?

(Cla.s.ses considered socially, industrially, as to race, as to economic and historical training.)

CHAPTER 43. SURVEY OF THE THEORY OF VALUE

1. Mention any cases you can think of where merely changing the place of things added to their value; or changing their form; or where the mere lapse of time added to the value of the thing.

2. What effect on wages and interest does the bringing in of foreign capital have?

3. If, through greater efficiency of labor, wealth increases, which share benefits?

4. What would be the effect on wages, interest, and land rent of a sudden addition of rich land to the country?

5. What would be the effect on interest, land rent, and wages of a great increase of national saving?

6. What concern have the poor in the abundance of capital? The rich in the abundance of labor?

7. Walker says that the laborer gets what is left after the other shares are deducted according to their law; wages are the residual claimant.

Are the other shares independent of wages?

8. Can wage-earners be shut out from all advantages in the land of the country?

9. Are high wages and high interest seen to go together? Give such examples as you think of.

10. Do improvements in agriculture increase or decrease the rent of land?

CHAPTER 44. FREE COMPEt.i.tION AND STATE ACTION

1. What is economic freedom? How different from political freedom?

2. Does the presence of a policeman increase or diminish compet.i.tion among men?

3. Are most positive laws intended to hinder compet.i.tion or make it freer?

4. In what ways does compet.i.tion reduce the total product?

5. Is custom a better regulator of economic action than compet.i.tion?

6. Criticize the doctrine of economic harmony, giving examples.

CHAPTER 45. USE, COINAGE, AND VALUE OF MONEY

1. If gold were to become as plentiful as iron, would it be worth more or less than iron?

2. Some say Providence has indicated gold and silver as the materials for money. How has this been done?

3. Why does nearly all the gold produced in California leave the state?

What keeps any of it there?

4. Who makes coins? Would jewelers make better ones?

5. When gold comes out of the mine is the gain to the community greater or less than when the same value of grain is harvested?

6. Does gold cost the day-laborer as much in California as in New York?

7. What are the princ.i.p.al things besides money uses that cause a demand for gold and silver?

8. The mint price of an ounce of gold, .900 fine, is alike at San Francisco and Philadelphia, $18.604. Why is gold ever shipped from California to New York?

9. Give examples of things that increase the demand for money.

10. Note any habits of friends that result in their carrying more or less money than others of the same income.

11. What determines the amount of money needed by different persons, towns, states, and nations?

12. When goods are exchanged for money or money for goods, what is the gain?

13. On an isolated island would it make any difference as to the value of money if there were but one gold-mine or several competing ones, supposing that the output were the same?

CHAPTER 46. TOKEN COINAGE AND GOVERNMENT PAPER MONEY

1. Define legal-tender as applied to money. What is meant by fiat money?

2. Show the difference between convertible and inconvertible money.

3. The government of the island of Guernsey having no money, issued paper-notes to pay for the building of a market. They circulated and were gradually taken up as the market earned its cost, during ten years.

When they were all redeemed and burned, the island had the market free of cost. Explain how this could be done. (This is from Sumner's _Problems in Political Economy_.)

CHAPTER 47. THE STANDARD OF DEFERRED PAYMENTS

1. If every piece of money should miraculously be doubled in a night, whose interests would be affected?

2. Is the fact of one man's gain and another man's loss by chance of any economic or political importance?

3. What gives rise to the belief sometimes held that money is an invariable standard of value?