The under-consumption theorist, seeing the same facts, says that the trouble is lack of purchasing power.

He observes that there are some people who would like to buy more of some of these things, but that such people lack income with which to buy.
Usually he asserts that this is because production grows faster than wages, wages being fixed, as he believes, by the minimum of subsistence--a theory akin to the iron law of wages.

In both over-production and under-consumption theories, the inequality of demand and supply is looked upon as a general one.

There is supposed to be not merely an unequal and mistaken distribution of production, but a general excess of productive power.
The wide vogue held by these views would justify a fuller discussion and disproof of them here, did space permit.

It must suffice to indicate merely that they have the same taint of illogicalness as the "fallacy of waste," and the "fallacy of luxury."[9] They overlook the fact that an income, either of money or of other goods, coming even to the wealthiest, will be used in some way.