Definition
The availability of a resource at the present date.
Origins
Analogous to jam tomorrow, replacing tomorrow with today.
In Context
- "The consumption-possibilities curve illustrates the choice which must be made: more jam today means less jam tomorrow; less jam today means more jam tomorrow."
- "A basic human characteristic is the preference for consumption today over consumption tomorrow. Jam today is always better than jam tomorrow, unless sufficient incentive is offered to forgo the immediate enjoyment of today's jam. This is not because of uncertainty about the likely receipt of tomorrow's jam, but merely a property of the passage of time."
- "For one-period optimization, the obvious course of action to maximize consumption is to consume the whole of output by “eating up” the capital stock. The inapplicability of this tactic to an industrializing nation is transparent—it gets a lot of jam for today but leaves little for tomorrow. Jam today has therefore to be balanced against jam tomorrow."