THE SHARING OF GOODS AND SERVICES The distribution of a nation's output among its people is certainly one matter which arouses intense interest. This is true whether the question is examined from the standpoint of functional or of personal distribution. In the first instance, we deal with division of output among the productive factors (labor, capital, land, and enterprise). In the second instance, we are concerned with the sharing of the nation's goods and services among its consumer spending units. Jesse Burkhead, of Syracuse University, examines functional distribution in the United States in "Changes in the Functional Distribution of Income." E. T. Weiler, of Purdue University, discusses the problem of inequality in personal income distribution in "The Distribution of Income in the United States in 1954." Concern over the historical pattern of distribution leads to various efforts at modification. Some of the most significant are minimum wage laws, progressive income taxes, and social security measures. George J.
Stigler, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, analyzed the effects of minimum wage legislation in "Economics of Minimum Wage Legislation." Some results of our government's enactment of a minimum wage are reported in Studies of the Economic Effects of the $1 Minimum Wage. F. W. Taussig, the late eminent Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, analyzed the principle of progression in taxation in his famous work Principles of Economics. The degree to which the application of that principle in American personal and corporate income taxes has actually introduced progression to the over-all tax structure is examined by Richard A. Musgrave, Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, in "The Incidence of the Tax Structure and Its Effects on Consumption." Old Age and Survivors Insurance redistributes income in three ways: (1) over time, (2) as between persons becoming covered by the system at widely differing ages; and (3) as between high and low income contributors. Some of these matters are discussed by Alanson W. Willcox, formerly General Counsel of the Federal Security Agency, in "The Contributory Principle and the Integrity of Old Age and Survivors Insurance: A Functional Evaluation." Attempts at income redistribution invariably raise the question of its effects on incentives. George F. Break, of the University of California at Berkeley, argues that American efforts at redistribution have not undermined incentives in his "The Effects of Taxation on Work Incentives." Crawford H. Greenwalt, head of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Cornpany, takes the contrary position, with respect to business executives, in "The Effect of High Tax Rates on Executive Incentive."