ity. This consideration, however, does
not affect the general validity of the conclusion that the laws of
supply and demand represent what is socially desirable now or under
any system. For what is at fault here is the distribution of wealth;
and it is that which should be changed, in so far as it is possible to
do so. Now it is important to realize that whenever it is possible to
supply a commodity to poor people below cost price, it is possible to
alter the distribution of wealth, for that in effect is what is
done. Purchasing power, which may be taken from richer people by
taxation, or which may be obtained from "collective" profits on other
trading, is in effect transferred to the poor people in question,
though the transference is coupled with the condition that the
purchasing power must be expended in a particular way. It is _in
general_ desirable that the transference should be made without this
condition being attached. To this general statement, exceptions indeed
exist so numerous and important as possibly to justify a great
extension of social expenditure of this type. Education should
certainly be provided free of charge, there are strong arguments for
subsidizing housing; the provision of milk to expectant mothers, the
feeding of school children, such instances can be multiplied into a
very extensive list. But it is important to observe that in each case
the justification of the policy rests in the presumption that the
service supplied is one which it is particularly important that the
beneficiaries should have, _as compared with_ the other things upon
which they might have preferred to expend the equivalent purchasing
power, had it been transferred to them without conditions. Where there
is no such presumption, as surely there is none in the case of the
great bulk of commodities, the relation between price and marginal
cost should be rigidly maintained; it is the distribution of
purchasing power which we should rather seek to alter. How far is it
possible to alter that?

I suppose that it is inevitable that many readers will have concluded
that the preceding chapters must be taken to mean that the
distribution of wealth is not susceptible of any appreciable change. I
would remind those readers of an important distinction upon which
impatient people have sometimes based a complaint against
economists. The economist, it is said, analyses with great pomp and
ceremony the laws governing the distribution of wea