WEALTH, NATIONAL. The wealth of a country may mean either the value of the objects found within its boundaries, regardless of the ownership of those objects in part by people living abroad, or the wealth of the inhabitants, including their foreign possessions, and excluding wealth within the country held by people abroad. The confusion between these two ideas has played havoc with discussions on such subjects as "The Taxable Capacity of Ireland." (Vide Stamp's British Income Property p. 369.) It is the latter sense—the wealth of the inhabitants ex pressed in current money values—that is mainly under consid eration here.
Wealth in private hands (or belonging to individuals) is not easy to define, for there are various shades of ownership: (I) Absolute personal disposition of the whole "fee simple" value of a house, land or other object.
(2) Trust interests, where ownership is more limited and free disposal is barred, but where the ownership of a source of income for a period has a capital value.
(3) Collective ownership with only potential specific allocation to individuals, such as the reserves of companies which may be of higher value in the hands of the company than the aggregation of the market value of individual interests therein.
(4) Collective ownership, without the possibility of individual allocation, or social private wealth, such as churches, clubs, etc.
(a) City and local property, like waterworks, buildings and trams, having a "value" determinable by deliberate comparison with privately owned objects.
(b) National property, varying from a museum to a navy, which can less easily be given a "purchase price." Uses to Which the Figures of National Wealth Are Put. —These include : (I) Tests of "progress," by way of comparisons between dif ferent years, to show the accumulation of capital, and really valid where the level of prices has remained fairly constant ; tests of the distribution of wealth, according to the form or embodiment which wealth takes, e.g. between houses, lands and bonds; tests of the effects of changes in the rate of interest, or in the value of money.
(2) Tests of the relative "prosperity" or resources of different nations or communities, at the same point of time either as a whole, or per head of the population, and also in relation to their national debts and taxation.
(3) Comparisons of income with capital and property.
(4) Consideration of the distribution of wealth according to individual fortunes, and changes in that distribution.
(5) Consideration of the applicability and yield of schemes of taxation, e.g., the capital levy.
(6) Questions relating to war indemnities and "ability to pay." The summary presented to the Royal Statistical Society by Sir Josiah Stamp in May 1919 endeavoured to present the position as in 1914. High authorities had argued that the wealth of the United Kingdom in 1914 was approximately L 1 o,000,000,000, others had placed it as high as £24,000,000,000, but in each case the estimates were associated with polemical matters. Sir Josiah's figure was £14,310,000,000.