IX
“Would have come to see you sooner, but the problem presented unusual features that required study.” The speaker was a little stoop-shouldered man with a bulging bald head. He addressed Perry over a glass of sherry in the latter’s cottage. “When Master Hedrick told me that he wanted me to explain the theory and practice of our present economic system to a man with the point of view of America 1939,Ithought that he was in need of some of his own treatment. But when he elucidated I realized that I was confronted with the most startling problem in pedagogy I had ever undertaken. I wasn’t able to undertake it without preparation. I had to search out and read much of the literature of your period and then spend several days in meditation in order to try to feel the period, understand the point of view, evaluations, and the fallacies of your time.”
Perry shifted uneasily in his chair. “I didn’t intend to cause you so much trouble, Master Davis.”
“No trouble at all. You have done me a service. This is a most fascinating approach to the subject that has been my principle interest. By preparing to explain it to you, I understand it better myself. First tell me what you know of the present system.”
“Well, in the first place it has retained private enterprise in industry. There I suppose it’s a form of capitalism.”
Davis nodded. “An inadequate word, but let it stand.”
Perry continued, “However, although production, and so forth, is private enterprise, each citizen receives a check for money, or what amounts to the same thing, a credit to each account each month, from the government. He gets this free. The money so received is enough to provide the necessities of life for an adult, or to provide everything that a child needs for its care and development. Everybody gets these checks—man, woman, and child. Nevertheless, practically everyone works pretty regularly and most people have incomes from three or four times to a dozen or more times the income they receive from the government. There is no such thing as unemployment because there is always a demand for more production. Consequently wages are high. However prices are low, and to make the situation even more confusing, merchants regularly sell goods at less than cost, and the government pays them the difference. That is the general set up, if I understand what I have been told. It sounds impossible, an Alice-in-Wonderland business, filled with contradictions that deny common sense. It disturbs me. It challenges my reason. I’d be less annoyed at a perpetual motion machine.”
Davis smiled. “I appreciate your difficulty. It is necessary first to clean your mind of a number of the errors, superstitions, and half truths that went by the name of ‘economics’ in your day. Consider for a moment the physical facts of the situation that you see around you. Disregard the money aspect for a moment and think in terms of goods, people, production and consumption. What then is the situation?”
“Well—I see that everyone has a pretty high standard of living, they live in good houses, and eat plenty of good food, and they have plenty of the comforts of life. That’s the consumption side. On the production side I see factories and farms, and so forth, that produce at a high rate with lots of labor saving machinery. Nobody has to work very hard unless he really wants to. Anybody that does gets a big return for it in terms of goods and services.”
“Do you see any difficulty in the picture now—still leaving money out of it?”
“Well, no. The physical wealth is there and the work done is enough to turn it into a high standard of living.”
“Now describe 1939 in terms of physical economy—again leaving out money. Be careful not to use any term that implies money, such as wages, debt, price, and so forth.”
Perry grinned. “You’re preparing a trap for me. I can see it coming.”
Davis was serious. “It’s not a trap. It’s a necessary expedient to lead your mind around its ingrown economic errors and enable it to think correctly. Go ahead and describe it.”