subtracted, for the time, from the material products which society would otherwise have possessed.
To be wasted, however, is a liability not confined to unproductive labor. Productive labor may equally be waste, if more of it is expended than really conduces to production. If defect of skill in laborers, or of judgment in those who direct them, causes a misapplication of productive industry, labor is wasted. Productive labor may render a nation poorer, if the wealth it produces, that is, the increase it makes in the stock of useful or agreeable things, be of a kind not immediately wanted: as when a commodity is unsalable, because produced in a quantity beyond the present demand; or when speculators build docks and warehouses before there is any trade.
§ 2. Productive and Unproductive Consumption.
The distinction of Productive and Unproductive is applicable to Consumption as well as to Labor. All the members of the community are not laborers,