mand of the public administration for salaries which, as their recipient must be perfectly conscious, bear no relation to the income which it would be open to him to earn in commercial competition.
On the whole, then, we may take it that the principle of the super-tax is based on the conception that when we come to an income of some £5,000 a year we approach the limit of the industrial value of the individual.[1] We are not likely to discourage any service of genuine social value by a rapidly increasing surtax on incomes above that amount. It is more likely that we shall quench the anti-social ardour for unmeasured wealth, for social power, and the vanity of display.
These illustrations may suffice to give some concreteness to the conception of economic justice as the maintenance of social function.
- ↑ It is true that so long as it remains possible for a certain order of ability to earn £50,000 a year, the community will not obtain its services for £5,000. But if things should be so altered by taxation and economic reorganization that £5,000 became in practice the highest limit attainable, and remained attainable even for the ablest only by effort, there is no reason to doubt that that effort would be forthcoming. It is not the absolute amount of remuneration, but the increment of remuneration in proportion to the output of industrial or commercial capacity, which serves as the needed stimulus to energy.
