Folia Theologica 11. (2000)
Eugene Csocsan de Váralja: The Just Income Distribution
THE JUST INCOME DISTRIBUTION 117 to impose official centrally defined prices. The principle of Christian subsidiarity however requires, that the central authority should not intervene unnecessarily in the affairs of its subjects, and in fact there is no better institution, than the free price formation. In such a system the contract makes law between the contracting parties: contractus ius facit inter partes. In such conditions can economic considerations prevail. In fact the economic goods are consumed directly or indirectly by the individuals, and only through the free price formation could the consumers, (who constitute the aim and the sense of the economic activity,) assert their evaluation. It should be emphasised, that in a monetary economy alone could such an evaluation really develop, and only in such an economy can we find a real market. The nominal income appears in money and the real income is realised by the consumers by the means of the money, and both incomes are formed on the market. Such price formations (and incomes) already emerged on the markets of antiquity, even if slavery prevailed then, and in the past centuries there were Hungarian feudal landlords, who made their herdsmen to drive cattle to the Western European markets. It is in fact the market, which executes the income distribution. Namely prices are formed by the market, and even if the prices are fixed, the number of the transfers at the fixed price will define the amount of income from that business. Economics distinguishes four kinds of incomes: the wages, the profits, the rent and the interest, and all the four are produced on the market.20 21 The interest on capital is formed on the money markets, and if the central authorities fix the interest, the capital will flow to such countries, where higher interest can be obtained. The rent on land will be defined by the supply and demand for land, and if 20 cf.: Benedictus MERKELBACH, Summa theologiae moralis, Vol. IL, Bruges 1962, pages 156-157 21 Paul. E. SAMUELSON, Economies. The chapter on “Distribution of Income” can be found on différent pages of the various issues since the 1948 edition in New York. (In the 1976 New York edition see pages 572- 597(wages), pages 598-619(interest), pages 620-628(profits), pages 559-571 (land rent). See also Heller, FARKAS, Közgazdaságtan (Economics), Volume L, Budapest 1945, pages 62-70 (wages), 71-78 (interest), pages 78-79 (profit), pages 79-83 (land rent).
