OH. 4
THE PUECHASING POWEE OF MONEY
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stitute for an adequate Index of Purchasing Power,failing anything better.
(iii.) The Labour Power op Money orEarnings Standard
This Standard aims at measuring the purchasingpower of money over units of human effort as con-trasted with units of commodity, so that the Pur-chasing Power of Money divided by its Labour Powerfurnishes an index of real earning power and henceof the Standard of Life .
The chief obstacle in the way of computing thisStandard is to be found in the difficulty of finding acommon unit in which to compare different kinds ofhuman effort. For even if we agree—as we must—•that it is proper to ignore degrees of skill in this con-nection and to mean the rate of earnings per unit ofeffort averaged over all the grades of skill actually pre-vailing in the community, we ought still, theoreticallyat least, to take account of variations in the intensity,distastefulness and regularity of work. In practice thebest we can achieve—even if we can achieve that—isto take as our index of the Labour Power of Moneyor Earnings Standard the average hourly money-earnings of the whole body of workers of every grade.
Some writers would present the Earnings Standardas a rival claimant of the Consumption Standard forthe position of the ideal objective standard in termsof which the monetary unit should be stabilised. Thisis a question of convenience and expediency whichwe shall discuss subsequently. It might be, ofcourse, that in certain types of social organism therewas a strong case on grounds of expediency forstabilising the Labour Power of Money rather thanits Purchasing Power, just as there might be