DEPARTMENT OF PERCEIVED VALUE |
| DIRECTOR Xander Van Der Sander |
ABOUT
It is true with nations as with individuals, if their annual consumption exceeds their annual income ; if the actual value of the articles imported into any country and tiiere Consumed, annually exceeds the actual value of the articles exported in payment for them ; that country must become indebted to the amount of the difference. In determining, however, the increase or decrease of national wealth, by a comparison of imports and exports, we are in the first place to in-, quire how, or in what manner, this value has been ascertained : a second question may also arise, whether the imports are all annually consumed in the country, or whether a part of them go to form an addition to the productive capital. The modes of valuing exports and imports are different in different countries.
In England, the rates at which the exports and imports are valued were settled in 1696. The value of all articles at that period, exported or imported, was fixed, and the value of all the exports and imports of that country has ever since been stated in their custom-house hooks at the rates then established. This is called the official value in the English accounts of exports and imports. In consequence of the great rise in most if hot all the articles of trade, for more than a century past, this official value is much less than the real or actual value. The difference in some articles is very great, in most it amounts to forty, fifty, and sixty percent.