Variable items

Variable items


Variable items are non-monetary items with variable real values over time.

Examples of variable items in today’s economy are property, plant, equipment, inventories, quoted and unquoted shares, raw material stock, finished goods stock, patents, trademarks, foreign exchange, etc.

The first economic items were variable real value items. Their values were not yet expressed in terms of money because money was not yet invented at that time. There was no inflation because there was no money. Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Inflation has no effect on the real value of non-monetary items. There was no unstable monetary medium of exchange. There was no unstable monetary unit of account. There was no unstable monetary store of value.

There was no double entry accounting model at that time. There were no historical cost items. There was no very destructive stable measuring unit assumption approved by the International Accounting Standards Board whereby accountants assume the unit of measure is stable, i.e., they consider that changes in the general purchasing power of money are not sufficiently important to require financial capital maintenance in units of constant purchasing power during low inflation and deflation. The stable measuring unit assumption is based on a very popular accounting fallacy since the real value of money is never absolutely stable on a sustainable basis during inflation and deflation. There was no Historical Cost Accounting model and no financial capital maintenance in nominal monetary units per se (another very popular IFRS-authorized accounting fallacy) during inflation; that is to say: there were no Historical Cost accounting fallacies. There was no value based accounting. There was also no Consumer Price Index at that time. Consequently there were no units of constant purchasing power and no price-level accounting.

Copyright © 2010 Nicolaas J Smith