Читать книгу A Tract on Monetary Reform онлайн

17 страница из 40

ssss1Since 1896 there has been the further burden of the Death Duties.

Purchasing Power of the Income of Consols.ssss1 Do. after deduction of Income Tax at the standard rate. Money price of the capital value of Consols. Purchasing Power of the capital value of Consols. 1815 61 59 92 56 1826 85 90 108 92 1841 85 90 122 104 1869 87 89 127 111 1883 104 108 138 144 1896 139 145 150 208 1914 100 100 100 100 1920 34 26 64 22 1921 53 39 56 34 1922 62 50 76 47

ssss1Without allowance for the reduction of the interest from 3 to 2½ per cent.

The second column well illustrates what a splendid investment gilt-edged stocks had been through the century from Waterloo to Mons, even if we omit altogether the abnormal values of 1896–97. Our table shows how the epoch of Diamond Jubilee was the culminating moment in the prosperity of the British middle class. But it also exhibits with the precision of figures the familiar bewailed plight of those who try to live on the income of the same trustee investments as before the war. The owner of consols in 1922 had a real income, one half of what he had in 1914 and one third of what he had in 1896. The whole of the improvement of the nineteenth century had been obliterated, and his situation was not quite so good as it had been after Waterloo.