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Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

David Ricardo

If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.
DAVID RICARDO

Capital Class Commercial Encouragement Prosperity
After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.
DAVID RICARDO

Cultivate Fertile Land Population Requirement Situation
The demand for money is regulated entirely by its value, and its value by its quantity.
DAVID RICARDO

Demand Quantity Value
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
DAVID RICARDO

Profit Wage Way Yourself
Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.
DAVID RICARDO

Compare exchange Gold Goodness Greatness
No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.
DAVID RICARDO

Commodity Enjoyment Increase Trade Value
There can be no greater error then in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption.
DAVID RICARDO

Consumption Errors Greatness Increase
The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.
DAVID RICARDO

Capital Farmer Purchase
If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.
DAVID RICARDO

Class Commercial Commodity Degree Demand Greatness Home
Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.
DAVID RICARDO

Material Money Tools Work
The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.
DAVID RICARDO

Natural Portion Price
If a commodity were in no way useful, – in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, – it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.
DAVID RICARDO

Commodity Contribute exchange Necessary Quantity Scarce Way
Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.
DAVID RICARDO

Agriculture Husband Improvement Profit
A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Money Production Profit Real Rise Value
But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.
DAVID RICARDO

Commodity Machine Production Rise Wage
But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Consume Effect Fall Luxury Price Profit Tax

Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

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Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

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