This last consideration, carrying as it does a natural bias in favour of a system retaining opportunities of unearned income, may have influenced my economic thinking in one or more of several ways. With a high value for security I may have been led to a half-conscious defence of “securities” as a mainstay of a sound economic system. Or, conscious of this bias, I may have brought an excessive weight of counter-bias in order to assert my independence of thought. There is also a third possibility open to one who realizes the manifold injustices of the capitalist system, viz. to propound a remedy so drastic that there is little or no danger of its adoption in our lifetime. When George Bernard Shaw argues in favour of an absolute equalization of income, as he does in his Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism,[1] he leaves himself open to the retort that he must know quite well that such a condition precludes any effective interference with his own large body of wealth. Fourthly, the fact that unearned income enabled me to devote most of my time and energy to the unremunerative work of writing economic books, though not formally accepted as a justification of such income, must often have presented itself in the light of an extenuating circumstance. It is, indeed, offered by many “intellectuals” as a complete defence of such unearned wealth as provides the requisite freedom to do the best kinds of work. Thus there are so many snares that no man, however
- ↑ London: Constable.
