Independent income is a stream of income

Income

Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...

  received without directly exchanging labour

Workforce

The workforce is the labour pool in employment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, country, state, etc. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and implies those involved in...

 power for it. Examples are interest

Interest

Interest is a fee paid by a borrower of assets to the owner as a form of compensation for the use of the assets. It is most commonly the price paid for the use of borrowed money, or money earned by deposited funds....

 on money capital

Capital (economics)

In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...

, dividend

Dividend

Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business , or it can be distributed to...

s earned by share ownership, rent

Renting

Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...

al income

Income

Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...

, etc.

Many economists and other professionals consider that there is a need in modern capitalist economies

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 for policies that encourage the acquisition of income generating capital assets that supplement or replace employment

Employment

Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...

 generated income. This need, it is argued, is driven by the progressive replacement of labour by capital in modern production.

Traditional economic theory counters this by contending that employment created in the growing service sector can absorb labour displaced in manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

. But this is by no means a smooth process since extensive retraining may be required before labour can be transferred to entirely new areas of activity.