Here again those who attack interest fall into the
same error. For example, in answer to arguments used by me when speaking
in America, one socialistic critic eagerly following another called my
attention by name to persons notoriously wealthy, some of whom had never
engaged in active business at all, while others had ceased to do so for
many years; and demanded of me whether I contended that idlers such as
these are doing anything whatever to produce the incomes which they are
now enjoying. If they are, said the critics, let this wonderful fact be
demonstrated. If they are not, then it must stand to reason that the
community will gain, and cannot possibly suffer, by gradually taking the
incomes of these persons away from them, and rendering it impossible
that incomes of a similar kind shall in the future be ever enjoyed by
anybody.

The general nature of the error involved in this class of argument can
be shown by a very simple illustration. In many countries the
government year by year makes a large sum by state lotteries. This may
be a vicious procedure, but let us assume for the moment that it is
legitimate, and that everybody is interested in its perpetuation. The
largest of the prizes drawn in such lotteries is considerable--often
amounting to more than twenty thousand pounds. Now, as soon as the
drawing on any one occasion had been accomplished, it might be argued
with perfect truth, in respect of that occasion only, that, the man who
had won such fortune having done nothing to produce it, the community
would be so much richer if the government, having paid the money to him,
were to take it all back again by a special tax on winnings. This would
be true with respect to that one occasion; but if any government were to
follow such a procedure systematically, no one would ever buy a lottery
ticket again, and the whole lottery system would thenceforth come to an
end.

What is true of wealth won in lotteries is true of wealth in general. If
the desire of possessing wealth is in any way a stimulus to the
production of it, those who are motived to produce it by this desire
to-day are motived by the desire of a something which they see to be
desirable and attainable because they see it around them, embodied in
the position of others, as the final result of the efforts of a
long-past yesterday. If this result were never to be seen realised, no
human being would make any effort to achieve it.

Let us--to go into particu