rgument is a bad fallacy#.

The fact is, that a person who has riches cannot help employing labour
of some kind or other. If he saves up his money he probably puts it into
a bank; but the banker does not keep it idle. The banker lends it out
again to merchants, manufacturers and builders, who use it to increase
their business and employ more hands. If he buy railway shares or
government funds, those who receive the money put it to some other
profitable use. If the rich man actually hoards up his money in the form
of gold or silver, he gets no advantage from it, but he creates so much
more demand for gold or silver. If many rich people were to take to
hoarding up gold, the result would be to make gold mining more
profitable, and there would be so many more gold miners, instead of
railway navvies, or other workmen.

We see then that, when a rich person decides how to spend his money he
is deciding not how many more workpeople shall be set to work, but what
kind of work they shall do. If he decide to give a grand fancy ball,
then in the end there will be so many more milliners, costumiers,
lacemakers, confectioners, &c. A single ball indeed will have no great
effect; but, if many people were to do the same, there would soon be
more tradespeople attracted to these trades. If, on the other hand, rich
people invest their money in a new railway, there will be so many more
surveyors, engineers, foremen, navvies, iron puddlers, iron rollers,
engine mechanics, carriage builders, &c.

The question really comes to this, whether people are made happier by
more fancy balls, or by more railways. A fancy ball creates amusement at
the time, but it costs a great deal of money, especially to the guests
who buy expensive costumes. When it is over there is no permanent
result, and no one is much the better for it. The railway, on the other
hand, is no immediate cause of pleasure, but it cheapens goods by
enabling them to be carried more easily: it allows people to live in the
country, instead of the crowded town, or it carries them on pleasant and
wholesome excursions.

We see, then, that it is simple folly to approve of consumption for its
own sake, or because it benefits trade. In spending our wealth we ought
to think solely of the advantage which people get out of that spending.

#15. The Fallacy of Non-consumption.# Some people fall into the opposite
fallacy of thinking that all spending is an evil. The best thing to do
with wealth