"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автораinterest in preventing such impoverishment. It will give what help it can in
the immediate crisis and reawaken that higher community of feeling, now thrust into the background by national egotism, for which human values have a validity independent of politics and frontiers. It will then procure for every nation conditions of work under which it can exist and under which it can bring forth fruits of culture. Production and Purchasing Power I do not believe that the remedy for our present difficulties lies in a knowledge of productive capacity and consumption, because this knowledge is likely, in the main, to come too late. Moreover the trouble in Germany seems to me to be not hypertrophy of the machinery of production but deficient purchasing power in a large section of the population, which has been cast out of the productive process through rationalization. The gold standard has, in my opinion, the serious disadvantage that a shortage in the supply of gold automatically leads to a contraction of credit and also of the amount of currency in circulation, to which contraction prices and wages cannot adjust themselves sufficiently quickly. The natural remedies for our troubles are, in my opinion, as follows:- (1) A statutory reduction of working hours, graduated for each department of industry, in order to get rid of unemployment, combined with purchasing-power of the masses to the amount of goods available. (2) Control of the amount of money in circulation and of the volume of credit in such a way as to keep the price-level steady, all special protection being abolished. (3) Statutory limitation of prices for such articles as have been practically withdrawn from free competition by monopolies or the formation of cartels. Production and Work An answer to Cederstr†m Dear Herr Cederstr†m, Thank you for sending me your proposals, which interest me very much. Having myself given so much thought to this subject I feel that it is right that I should give you my perfectly frank opinion on them. The fundamental trouble seems to me to be the almost unlimited freedom of the labour market combined with extraordinary progress in the methods of production. To satisfy the needs of |
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