Luxury and Waste of Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1908. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Details of luxurious expenditure--The amount of waste considered in relation to the amount of money spent. sions: first, that luxury and luxurious expenditure tend to be wasteful because they involve a waste of possible satisfaction for the community generally; secondly, that, whether justifiable or not, they entail a direct waste either of goods and services available for immediate use, or of material and labour-power which might be applied to the production of other goods and services. All through, the waste involved has been very closely associated with the amount of money expended. By our definition we connected luxury with expenditure beyond a certain limit; by our psychological argument, based upon the diminishing returns of satisfaction of wants, we connected the wastefulness of luxury with the increase of expenditure now reached two general concluupon our own individual satisfactions; and by the economic argument we connected the waste with the amount of consumption of goods and services--and chiefly, therefore, of labour-power and its products. It might seem, then, to be a reasonable inference that the amount of money expended is the final measure of the amount of waste.1 But, though truer than many people suppose, this inference is not true without very much qualification. The subject is far too complex to admit of the application of so simple a test, for two reasons. First, there is the undoubted fact that the same amount of money, expended in obtaining different satisfactions, may involve the con 1 It is necessary to point out that the word " waste" is used in the only sense which matters from the point of view taken throughout the book--that is, social waste, or waste which affects the community generally. Individual waste is of no import...