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372 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat
has been properly organized, the desired means of production and the workers
to make use of them, are available. This means that in the end the goods and
services planned are placed at the disposal of the population. It is still essen-
tial, however, that these goods and services should be made available to con-
sumers where the latter happen to be, so it is obviously necessary that the plan
should have provided for a distribution of products that corresponds to the
population distribution within the country. In this, demography has a clear
r61e to play, and the capacity to view events in their proper light required of it
just now on a national scale for various classes of consumers wil be wanted
this time on a regional scale, even down to that of the small administrative
district. The mobility of man has a fundamental influence on the way in which
he settles into the outside environment. He can produce, consume and spend
his leisure time in different places. To pass from production to consumption
requires, therefore, a knowledge of these migrations. A study of them is
demographically important. We shall return to this question in a moment.
The distribution of currency
59. In a market economy, however, it is still not enough to have the necessary
quantity of goods and services available in the places where the consumers are;
the latter must still to be able to buy them, and for that they must have money.
So it wil be impossible to carry out the plan properly unless an adequate dis-
tribution of currency has been arranged for.
The three ways of acquiring money
60. There are three principal ways in which a person can obtain money: in
remuneration for work done, as income from capital and, lastly, through pay-
ments effected by a collectivity and, more especially, by the State in accordance
with existing legislation. The proportions of these three means vary, depending
on the country and the political rkgime. Income from capital while practically
non-existent in Marxist economies is about at its maximum in countries such
as the United States of America. It seems that it is not possible for such income
to exceed one quarter of a country’s gross national product. A nation’s capital
represents four or five times that product, which makes it possible with a rate
of interest” of 4 to 5 % to distribute by this means 25 % at most of the monetary
resources placed at the disposal of the public.I*
The proportion distributed by collectivities also varies considerably, depend-
ing on the country. It is large wherever the development plan stresses the
social aspects of the situation. This procedure has been very much developed in
the recent past in support of a policy of the redistribution of income.
Finally, there is remuneration for work done, which accounts for the largest
proportion.
Behind all this monetary machinery, there is man himself. The worker receives
in principle, in exchange for his work, the necessary money for obtaining the
goods and services he and his family consume. But this does not mean that the
other two means lie outside his scope. On the other hand, persons who do not
form part of the labour force have only those two means at their disposal.